Housing and Community Rehab in the Existing Housing Stock: The Next Challenge for UN HABITAT III.

• In Event: Towards Habitat III 2016, Learning from Latin America and the LAHN

Abstract

This paper reviews the evolution of thinking about housing and urban development over than forty years and examines the primary outcomes of the previous two UN-HABITAT meetings in Vancouver 1976, and Istanbul in 1996 and the impact that those meetings, together with more recent (and frequent) World Urban Forum meetings have had upon the ways in which we think about the production and consumption of housing and habitat. In preparation for the 2016 UN-HABITAT III, this paper will report on the findings of the Latin American Housing Network research collaboration across eleven cities which has focused upon consolidated self-help housing that began in the 1970s and 1980s and which now form such a large part of the inner-urban housing stock. Policy makers urgently needs to begin to address the rising social and physical habitat needs of working class populations who live in these established neighborhoods that now enjoy prime location and access to city amenities, public transportation. Taking a “rights to the city” perspective, we argue that housing and community rehab policies are required to revive the housing opportunities for renters, sharers, and second and third generation household owners many of whom were raised in these settlements. However, the challenge will be to achieve this community and dwelling rehab against a backdrop of wider private sector-led urban regeneration programs that often threaten to displace long-time owners through buy outs by developers and gentrifiers.

Author

• Peter M Ward, University of Texas/Austin