Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the early twentieth century. In 1950, the city
housed a population of just over half a million. By
1981, this had grown to just over 2 million. The
city is located in a very narrow west-to-east valley,
and sites for new development have become
increasingly scarce.
In addition, since the 1950s, a very high
proportion of the growth of the city has been
accounted for by self-help low-income
settlements, referred to locally as barrios . T h e
individual dwellings that make up the barrios are
called rancho . Many of these may well start as
relatively poor dwellings, but the majority
undergo reasonably rapid improvement,
upgrading and consolidation (Plate 37.1). By
1985, 61 per cent of all dwellings in Caracas were
classified as barrios . Inevitably, given the site of the
city, an increasing proportion were to be found
located on hillsides. Jimenez-Dias (1994) notes
that by the mid-1980s, 67 per cent of the total
area occupied by barrios in Caracas were
geomorphologically unstable enough to justify the
eviction of the residents.
Before 1950, the record suggests that landslides
were rare in Caracas. Although some may have
missed being recorded, only twelve were
documented between 1800 and 1949. However,
the records show that by the 1950s through to the
1960s, such events had increased to an average of
CASE STUDIES OF URBAN LOW-
INCOME HOUSING
The urban poor in the developing world cannot
afford houses that are professionally or formally
surveyed, built and serviced. Where rental property
is available, rents are frequently exorbitantly high.
Thus poor citizens often construct periurban
structures on land that has not previously been
used for building purposes. Typical sites include
small vacant plots within the old walled section of
the city, as in Manila (Dwyer 1975). Another
typical site is on steep hillsides, as exemplified in
Caracas and Rio de Janeiro. Land that is swampy
or subject to flooding offers further opportunities,
as shown by the example of Singapore. Similarly,
land adjacent to railways is also often occupied, as
in the case of Kuala Lumpur. Recently reclaimed
areas are also frequently colonised. Thus such
settlements are open to a number of
environmental and socio-economic risks, and a
good deal of recent applied work has focused on
this topic (see Main and Williams 1994; Hardoy
et al . 1992).
The nature of the applied challenges presented
by low-income housing in third world cities is
well-exemplified in the case of Caracas,Venezuela.
This primate capital city grew extremely rapidly
following the development of the oil industry in
Plate 37.1 Housing in the
process of various stages of
consolidation, Caracas
(photograph: Rob Potter).
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