Di Virgilio: social housing and participatory urbanism

In Latin America housing is the urban problem par excellence: rapid urbanisation, informality and insufficient planning have produced cities where a large share of the population lives in precarious conditions and where governments have often failed to meet demand. María Mercedes Di Virgilio, an Argentine sociologist and researcher at CONICET and the University of Buenos Aires, addresses those complexities in her work on habitat, housing and the city in the region, and argues that without participatory urbanism housing policy arrives late or arrives somewhere else.

Precarious housing in the region

Social housing is the first theme. A large part of the Latin American population lives in precarious conditions, and housing policies have not always substantially improved their quality of life. Social housing programmes have been built, but they tend to be limited by scarce resources and prove insufficient; and they frequently lack comprehensive planning that considers access to basic services, transport and employment. The familiar result is the housing estate on the distant periphery: roof solved, city lost.

Participatory urbanism

Against that, Di Virgilio stresses participatory urbanism as a possible answer to the region's housing problems. The approach brings citizens into decisions about urban development and housing construction, and sees community participation as the element that guarantees solutions answer real needs. Through cases in several countries she shows how participatory experiences — cooperatives, neighbourhood upgrading with residents, the urbanisation of informal settlements — have improved quality of life and created a sense of belonging.

Fragmentation and public policy

Her work also analyses how public policies have fed urban fragmentation. Many cities in the region have grown in a disorderly way, with a clear separation between wealthy areas and those occupied by the poorest sectors. That fragmentation does not only create economic inequality: it affects access to basic rights such as transport and education, because distance and the lack of services turn location into destiny. Di Virgilio calls for rethinking urban policy to produce more inclusive and equitable cities.

Sustainability

Sustainability is the other dimension. Many housing projects do not consider long-term environmental impacts, and that creates future problems of habitability: neighbourhoods without shade, homes impossible to keep cool or warm, flood-prone ground. Di Virgilio proposes aligning housing policy with sustainability principles, with construction that is more efficient in energy and resources and technologies that minimise environmental impact, because cheap housing that is expensive to run is not affordable.

Di Virgilio's analysis offers a reading of the region's urban challenges that ends in a double demand: housing policies that are more inclusive and more sustainable, and an urbanisation decided together with those who will live in it. It is an invitation to reconsider current dynamics and to bet on participatory approaches that ensure equitable and resilient urban development.