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Accepted Paper:
Exploring the transformations of urban informality under slum upgrading programs in the City of Buenos Aires
Joaquin Benitez
(University of Buenos Aires)
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents some provisional reflections and findings from a qualitative research project that explores the effects of slum upgrading programs on urban informality in two settlements in the City of Buenos Aires. We are interested in exploring how tenure regularization and housing commodification might be affecting the informal economic and social fabric of these communities.
Paper long abstract:
In 2016, the government of the City of Buenos Aires announced comprehensive upgrading programs in four informal settlements with a holistic approach and major investments efforts. These interventions would include new social housing, formal connections to public services, upgrading the public space, improving existing homes, and tenure regularization.
Urban informality is a political economy of place that connects spaces and economies, where deregulation creates new forms of accumulation, power and authority as a byproduct of State planning and regulation, complementing rather than undermining that very same power. It is a state of permanent negotiation and renegotiation, with its own winners and losers, and agents from multiple scales converging on its territory to secure, consolidate and distribute economic and political resources. The arrival (or return) of State power through upgrading programs can only upset this political economy of urban informality, with its upgrading agencies, street-level bureaucrats, transformations of the built environment, and regularization of tenure. Therefore, agents living in communities undergoing upgrading efforts are then forced to renegotiate their informal arrangements in housing, labor, enterprises, and reproductive practices.
This paper presents some provisional reflections and findings from a qualitative research project that explores the effects of slum upgrading and formalization programs on urban informality in the City of Buenos Aires. Our fieldwork focuses on two settlements (Villa 20 and Barrio Padre Mugica), particularly tending to how formalization, commodification and financialization might be affecting the economic and social fabric of these communities.
Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality, and to see the links to virtual rooms. Log in
Accepted Paper:
Paper short abstract:
Paper long abstract:
In 2016, the government of the City of Buenos Aires announced comprehensive upgrading programs in four informal settlements with a holistic approach and major investments efforts. These interventions would include new social housing, formal connections to public services, upgrading the public space, improving existing homes, and tenure regularization.
Urban informality is a political economy of place that connects spaces and economies, where deregulation creates new forms of accumulation, power and authority as a byproduct of State planning and regulation, complementing rather than undermining that very same power. It is a state of permanent negotiation and renegotiation, with its own winners and losers, and agents from multiple scales converging on its territory to secure, consolidate and distribute economic and political resources. The arrival (or return) of State power through upgrading programs can only upset this political economy of urban informality, with its upgrading agencies, street-level bureaucrats, transformations of the built environment, and regularization of tenure. Therefore, agents living in communities undergoing upgrading efforts are then forced to renegotiate their informal arrangements in housing, labor, enterprises, and reproductive practices.
This paper presents some provisional reflections and findings from a qualitative research project that explores the effects of slum upgrading and formalization programs on urban informality in the City of Buenos Aires. Our fieldwork focuses on two settlements (Villa 20 and Barrio Padre Mugica), particularly tending to how formalization, commodification and financialization might be affecting the economic and social fabric of these communities.
Inclusive Futures for Informal Workers in Cities in the Global South II
Session 1 Thursday 7 July, 2022, -