Urban Regeneration in Latin America

Abstract

After more than a half century of suburbanisation in US and Latin American cities, many of the old ‘first suburbs’ are now experiencing many of the social and urban redevelopment problems formerly confronting the ‘inner cities’. Yet, these ‘innerburbs’ are rarely the focus of housing analysis and public policy formulation. This article explores emerging research about the first suburbs in the United States and compares them with their low-income formerly irregular and spontaneous settlements in which families have self-built and consolidated their homes over 30–40 years. In contrast to US cities where location and changing lifestyles are leading to population turnover and new population pressures as people turn back to the city, in Latin America there is little population turnover and mobility with the original households remaining in their self-built homes. Here the principal challenge is to retrofit and rehabilitate existing housing stock.