Paper Short Abstract:

The purpose of this proposal is to focus on the processes carried out by inhabitants of informal settlements in the northeast of the city of Montevideo, reflecting on the strategies through which these inhabitants seek to influence public housing policy in Uruguay.

Paper Abstract:

Starting from the field work of my doctoral thesis, I have been working on the expansion processes of the city of Montevideo towards the metropolitan northeast. Several informal settlements, located in this area, find strategies to influence the application of urban public policy to achieve improvements in their quality of life, such as improving roads, incorporating public lighting, access to public transportation, improvement of squares and public spaces, and as a last resort, processes that allow them to regulate their situation and transform themselves from precarious occupants of their homes into owners.

These processes are not only part of technical planning, but most of the time they have their origin and their counterparts in the neighborhoods where these improvements take place. Many times they arise as complaints, demands from a neighborhood commission, which is organized for such purposes by the inhabitants. These commissions generally have a strong base of local territorial management, with the formation of networks of neighbors, which come together, generating a network, where power relations include some and exclude others, but through which they generate movements that allow improvements to be made.

Seeking to exchange and reflect on these processes and how they develop, I present this proposal.