The process of appropriation of housing in improving habitat quality. Case studies in Lima and Bogota

Abstract

The objectives of this research are: first of all, to understand how the relationship is between housing appropriation process that the inhabitants create where they live (house and environment), and the improvement of the quality of their habitat; and secondly, to explain why it develops in a specific way. All of the above is based on physical context peripheral and marginal of urban settlements in two Latin American cities, and over a temporal context of two decodes. Six housing appropriation process cases were studied, three in Lima and three in Bogotá; by analyzing some interrelated strategies that the inhabitant (as a principal actor in the construction and transformation of their own habitat as an individual and pan of a community) creates in his or her experience.

This study facilitates the understanding of the diversity of the urban space in popular settlements, independent of the obvious lack of necessary facilities that need to be properly implemented and/or improved. The reading must be done from the conviction that it is an urban dynamic that emerges under n specific logic that needs to be recognized lo understand.