Advances and limitations of urban interventions in informal settlements in medium-sized municipalities in Brazil and Argentina

Abstract

In the 20th century, the rapid demographic growth and the uncontrolled urban expansion in Latin America contributed to the formation of informal settlements in the cities. The right to adequate housing has been widely studied at the international level; however, its multidimensional character, according to the definitions of the UN General Comment N. 4, still lacks parameters for analysis and application. An important step to define such parameters is the evaluation of political actions promoted by legal instruments. Urban and housing policy went through important milestones — in Brazil, through the Federal Constitution (1988) and the City Statute (2001), and in Argentina, through the Constitution (1994) and the Ley de Acceso Justo al Hábitat (2013). In both countries, especially in the area of land tenure and urban regularization, the revision implemented in Brazil by the Federal Law of Urban Land Regularization (13.465/2017) and, in Argentina, by the National Law of the Regimén para la Integración Socio-urbana (27.453/2018) brought significant changes. Moreover, despite the diversity of housing programs implemented in Argentina and the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program in Brazil, the housing needs of the low-income population persists, and access to urbanized land remains highly financialized. Considering such paradigm changes in the last 15 years, the objective of this study was to analyze the results promoted by these changes in the legal and regulatory framework regarding access to urbanized land by low-income populations. For this purpose, the advances and limits of intervention policies in informal settlements were evaluated, considering land tenure and urban regularization at the municipal and/or provincial levels, based on six selected cases of urbanization, removal, and regularization — completed or in an advanced stage — in the medium-sized cities of Bauru (Brazil, State of São Paulo) and La Plata (Province of Buenos Aires). The methodology included bibliometric and bibliographic review, documental research, field research, and qualitative-quantitative evaluation of the right to adequate housing involving the dimensions of tenure security, location, and availability of services, materials, facilities, and infrastructure. The results provided an exchange of experiences involving political actions applied in both cities, based on the selected case studies.