Hardly any country in Spanish-speaking America has been so inspirational for architects and social scientists interested in squatter settlements as Peru (the other key example being Portuguese-speaking Brazil and its well-known favelas). Like many other Latin American states, Peru experienced a rapid expansion in barriadas (the local name for shanty towns) from early in the twentieth century, when rural-to-urban migration precipitated a housing crisis and mass land invasions in cities such as Lima. However, the Peruvian approach to mass-scale affordable housing was in most aspects unique. Regarding the barriadas themselves, Peru was by a wide margin the first country in the sub-continent where governments recognised residents’ right to land tenancy, initially case by case during the 1950s, and later by law in 1961. This happened in a context where other Latin American governments were fiercely focused on mass eviction. But also, throughout this period, the Peruvian state sustained a pioneering approach in systematically assisting residents in self-construction. Here I have in mind not only mid-twentieth century aided self-help but also, crucially, the celebration of the self-built community as an ‘alternative model of development’ (p. 293) during the dictatorship of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75). Furthermore, the architectural discussions that surrounded these schemes, crucially mediated by English architect John F. C. Turner, transformed the profession's outlook toward the so-called ‘slums’ worldwide.
Helen Gyger's Improvised Cities is an excellent, exciting and timely historical investigation into the aforementioned processes. Indeed, the book covers a surprising gap, as the importance of the Peruvian case has not been reflected in academic production on the topic. There was, of course, a wave of studies in the 1980s which sought to understand the political and social processes unleashed in squatter settlements by the government of Velasco Alvarado. Shortly before, Velasco Alvarado had sought to channel all social mobilisation through the state, crucially replacing the stigmatising term barriadas by the more positive pueblos jóvenes (literally ‘young towns’) in order to engage residents in the process. More recently, some studies have looked into the PrEVi (Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda, Experimental Housing Project), designed in 1960s Lima. However, up until now no historical research had sought to reconstruct the history of government designs for squatter settlements in Peru during their key decades of formation (the 1950s to the 1980s). Reflecting years of archival work, Improvised Cities embarks on this effort, masterfully tying together architectural, political and social discussions.
Gyger introduces us to the housing discussion in Peru through three main characters: Fernando Belaúnde Terry, Pedro Beltrán and Adolfo Córdova. A reformist architect and later president of Peru (1963–8 and 1980–5), Belaúnde Terry focused on designing neighbourhood units, self-contained communities to be built in the surroundings of Lima. Beltrán, on the other hand, promoted the first designs of a ‘house that grows’, a direct precedent to the well-known idea of incremental housing. Critical of both approaches, meanwhile, left-wing Córdova argued that the only effective solution would be state-funded mass-scale social housing.
Belaúnde Terry, Beltrán and Córdova's discussions unfolded at a time when Peruvian administrations were starting to acknowledge the barriadas’ existence, and the second chapter of the book reconstructs the negotiations involved. In addition, it was during this period that state schemes offering technical and financial assistance for housing self-construction (‘aided self-help’) gained momentum as government policy. Thus, while Chapter 4 offers a thorough account of the implementation of aided self-help in the state offices, Chapter 3 follows Turner, an architect who worked in them and dramatically changed the tone of the discussion. Informed by this experience, Turner's writings challenged conventional conceptions of makeshift construction as unhygienic and backward, reading them instead as the reflection of poor people's resourcefulness to resolve their housing needs.
The second half of the book proceeds roughly chronologically. Some of the schemes described in Chapter 4 received international funding through organisations such as the Inter-American Development Bank, and Chapter 5 reconstructs these circuits of investment and ideas. Moreover, shortly after Turner left Peru, the government obtained United Nations funding for PrEVi, analysed in Chapter 6. Building on earlier ideas of incremental housing, PrEVi was designed through an international competition which included the participation of key young architects of the time. Furthermore, Peru's contribution to international housing discussions became most visible in 1976 in the first UN Habitat conference, again through Turner's crucial translation role. This conference, and especially the policies of Velasco Alvarado developed contemporaneously with it, are studied in Chapter 7. Finally, offering a masterful closing to the trajectories narrated, Chapter 8 addresses the work of another influential Peruvian thinker, neo-liberal Hernando de Soto, during a decade of increasing internal conflict. Highly optimistic regarding land titling as a way for the state to assist the urban poor, de Soto's theory has raised as much enthusiasm as criticism since it was first published.
No study can do it all, and in this case the aspect that remains uncovered is residents’ voices. As the author rightly acknowledges, reconstructing the viewpoints of the poor across history is a daunting (if not borderline impossible) task. Low-income communities and informal housing leave few traces in archives, as they produce scarce written records of their practice. In addition, even those records produced often get lost over the decades. However, while other researchers seek to cover this gap through oral history, combined methodologies or triangulations of heterogeneous archival materials, Improvised Cities remains focused on documents produced by professionals, policymakers and government departments. On the one hand, this lends coherence and strength to the study. Given the complexity of the issues discussed, keeping the focus on one of the main actors at stake, the state, helps the reader to follow the narrative smoothly. On the other hand, though, the result is a history where a fundamental actor is made invisible.
In short, Improvised Cities is a brilliant, thorough and exciting study of a crucial moment for low-income housing. The amount and density of sources collected is impressive, the analysis comprehensive, and the resulting text is not only illuminating but also enjoyable and relevant to current practice. Indeed, as Gyger and others highlight, Peru's twentieth-century housing discussions influenced architectural practice throughout the rest of Latin America over the decades that followed, including that of Chilean Alejandro Aravena (winner of the 2016 Pritzker Prize), thus transcending their own space and time.
