Cultural variables differ informal settlement interventions in Accra and Buenos Aires

ABSTRACT

Informal settlement growth in various countries has led to distinctive actions that enhance low-income populations’ accessibility to proper housing and basic services. These actions differ with the diverse contexts of a given country or city. Nevertheless, scholars have underscored the importance of comparative studies to promote knowledge sharing. In response, this paper compares the experiences of Accra in Ghana and Buenos Aires in Argentina by engaging with cultural variables and community-level interventions. In Accra, the findings indicate that settlements have both positive and negative images. By contrast, in Buenos Aires, the public often sees villas as areas to be avoided, given their consistent image characterized by poverty, crime, and drugs since the 1980s. The paper suggests understanding the cultural variables as a crucial analytical component to explain better why the varying structural constraints (governance structures, funding mechanisms, and public policies) are present in shaping informal settlement interventions worldwide.

KEYWORDS:

• Informal settlements
• cultural variables
• Accra
• Buenos Aires
• comparative studies

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Richard Stren, Gerard Turley, Francesca Ferlicca, Indivar Jonnalagadda, Daniel Kozak, and Adrian Luchini for comments, critiques, and research support. The author is grateful to the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) at the University of Toronto for supporting the postdoctoral research on which part of this article is based.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Generally, it represents the urban fragments or districts that develop and operate largely outside the state's formal control (Dovey & King, 2011, p. 12).

2 See Ong (2011) regarding the process of “worlding cities” – acknowledging the disparate styles of urban living circulating in and through metropolitans other than the Western prototypes.

3 For CABA, Figure 2 presents villas, asentamientos, and NHT (Núcleos Habitaciones Transitorios) together as they are all abnormal neighborhoods. Villas are the oldest settlement and developed due to gradual and unplanned occupation. The asentamiento results from an instantaneous and organized land invasion with a defined layout in line with the typical urban grid structure of the formal city and legal zoning requirements. NHT is a set of multi-family dwellings as a transitory housing solution for villa dwellers (Van Gelder, 2007). This paper focuses on villas.