Sustainability of housing and urban development in Latin America.

• Position: Essay

Latin America is changing and growing demographically. In many countries of the region, the growth rate is still quite high, especially in places where human and economic development levels are low, where fertility rates are high, where there ate few jobs for women, and where small farmers are not finding sufficient reasons to move to the cities. Overall, however, the population pyramid is flat at the base, bulges in the middle, and widens at the top; there are relatively fewer children, a large number of young adults, and an increasing number of older adults. Families are smaller, and couples are more fluid and divisible. The number of households is increasing, but each has a smaller number of members. The middle classes tend to be the majority in most Latin American countries and they have expectations and possibilities of increasing their consumption and living standards. Significant percentages of the population continue to live in rural areas, but the percentage will lessen as development occurs.

By the third decade of this century, there will be more than 150 million households in Latin America, which means that millions of houses will have to be financed and built each year. Cities are built by building houses. The nature, vitality, competitiveness, and long-term viability of Latin American cities will depend on the way in which housing is conceived, designed, and distributed throughout the territory. Housing policies are the key for making sure these things happen in the right way.

In developed countries, generally speaking, new urban developments begin as plans. Infrastructure and public transportation are brought in after the planning, and finally after the housing is built. Planners ensure the right mix of land use, civic and recreational spaces, and ways to connect with the rest of the city. Municipal governments guarantee governance and high-quality public goods and services.

In Latin America, however, things often happen in reverse. New housing clusters spring up on lower-cost, rural lands without any planning. Disconnected sites are first populated with disorderly patches of impersonal housing that have no common spaces or places for recreation. Later, services are introduced, and finally public transportation might arrive irregularly. Because the development is isolated, it is expensive to get anywhere else. Municipal governments are incapable of providing what is lacking in these dysfunctional peri-urban growths, which ate...