Sustainable Integration of Informal Settlements: the Case of Buenos Aires

Agustina Rodríguez Biasone

Program Coordinator, Development of Human Potential of Ministry of Human Development and Habitat, Buenos Aires, Argentina 

December 4, 2023

Argentina’s first emergency settlements arose because of the urbanization process encouraged by import substitution and the industrialization drive of the 1950s. These settlements are generally populated by internal migrants or from neighboring countries, mostly from rural areas, seeking opportunities in the cities' factories. Initially intended as transitional locations, residents ended up living there without resources due to the economic crisis, leading to their growth in an unorganized and informal manner (both in design and construction). In 2017, Argentina’s Law 27,453 established the Land Regularization Regime for Socio-Urban Integration and declared the socio-urban integration regime of popular neighborhoods as a matter of public interest, which effectively created a national registry of slums and informal settlements. Today, 5,687 informal neighborhoods with more than 5 million residents are registered. In Buenos Aires alone, there are 50 informal settlements where more than 400,000 people live in precarious housing and lack health services, access to public transport, waste recollection, and public recreation spaces. 

Although urbanization is an opportunity for sustainable development, its impacts are very complex and involve the creation and use of new methodological tools to address said impacts. To integrate a vulnerable neighborhood into the city means much more than just building houses. In 2016, the government of Buenos Aires created an integrated and multidimensional social approach to this situation, implementing a public policy that would guarantee the right to the city and ensure access to affordable housing, social amenities (hospitals, schools, recreation centers, etc.), public spaces, and connection to all services. This policy also involves the promotion of local productivity and innovation, environmental sustainability, recognition of diverse cultural expressions and their coexistence, and deepening the participation, discussion, and political institution of the entire population.

By coordinating with different areas of the government as well as the private sector, social organizations, and residents, integration processes focused on three main axes were carried out: 

• Housing: providing access to decent affordable housing and giving residents the property title of their home (more than 6000 new houses and 10900 housing improvements).

• Urban: connecting the neighborhood to the city and the city to the neighborhood in a sustainable way, through the opening of streets and passages to facilitate transit; as well as public spaces, access to basic infrastructure services, recollection, and treatment of waste (more than 108 km of infrastructure and 58 new streets); and

• Socioeconomic: enhancing the productive activity of each neighborhood while respecting their identity, through training, education, and employment promotion.

To achieve this, and to guarantee the security of the integration process, a law was passed for each neighborhood that determines how to carry out the process and who will have access to a housing solution. More than 2000 participatory boards have been organized as part of these efforts. Participation is a pillar of this process: involving residents in all decision-making processes, along with social organizations, other government areas, and the private sector, is a central and irreplaceable value compared to any decision that may be made by technocracy. This implies a new way of understanding the planning and management of the re-urbanization and socio-urban integration process and rethinking the bidirectional relationship between the state and civil society in making decisions about significant issues for the affected populations. 

Socio-urban integration processes face critical environmental risks, such as the lack of access to safe drinking water, and serious health effects caused by the absence of access to effective sanitation systems, drainage, sewers, and electricity. The integration project was designed to minimize the consequences of climate change and to address local impacts such as floods, heat waves, and severe storms.

Making this intervention sustainable also required increasing people´s economy, by integrating workers living in informal settlements into the formal economic system and developing the social economy. Two laws were passed that focused on two pathways: employment and production. The establishment of the private sector and financing are most important, as these are the only ways for the most vulnerable populations to access and remain in affordable housing (which requires paying for services, mortgage credit, and home improvement). 

By generating a starting point in these vulnerable neighborhoods that have been neglected for decades, this multidimensional social approach allows growth as well as development not only in the informal settlements but also for the entire city. Reurbanizing and integration means recognizing the validity of the social production of habitat and attempting to generate interventions that transform reality to enhance the human quality of vulnerable neighborhoods. Achieving this requires establishing a constant dialogue that leads to consensus between technocracy and residents, using a variety of tools for different levels of participation in the integration process. Each tool, of course, will require its own methodology, planning, and regulations. Each instrument used must be robust enough to build trust and attachment, while also being adaptable to the context.