Analyzing Urban Poverty: GIS for the Developing World

By Rosario Giusti de Pérez and Ramón Pérez

In developing countries, squatter developments that house more than one-third of the urban population are without infrastructure and built from materials at hand. Analyzing Urban Poverty: GIS in the Developing World demonstrates how geographic information systems (GIS) can be used to improve quality of life in poor urban areas. With 30 years of experience using GIS technology to manage urban problems in Venezuelan barrios, Rosario Giusti de Pérez and Ramón Pérez describe how they developed sustainable solutions that go beyond conventional planning programs. Chapters cover site analyses of the natural and built environments, visualization of poverty maps, development of appropriate improvement proposals, management of projects, and organization of communities, and encouragement of their participation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Esri Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781589483286

Rosario Giusti de Pérez

Rosario Giusti de Pérez received her degree in architecture from Zulia University in Venezuela and her masters in urban design at the University of Pennsylvania. She was a professor of architecture at Zulia University for twenty-three years. All of her urban designs have won national competitions. Currently, she is the director of Esri Venezuela and lives in Maracaibo.

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A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH TO PROBLEMS IN URBAN SQUATTER DEVELOPMENTS

In developing countries, the scope and depth of urban poverty requires immediate action. Yet no sustainable solution exists in conventional planning programs developed by government agencies. Improvement programs that seemed to work when the problem was concentrated in 20 percent of the urban areas have shown themselves to be incapable of functioning in current conditions. Urban areas occupied by squatter developments in large Latin American cities can reach up to 60 percent of the total urban development. Today cities find it nearly impossible to provide enough urban services to satisfy the demands of the urban poor. Clearly, the problems in squatter developments are huge and governments are overwhelmed in their attempts to solve them.

To alleviate poverty conditions in squatter developments, we first need to understand how the developments function and how they are organized. This becomes a basic requirement for conceiving adequate improvement programs. In this chapter, we describe the conditions that must be identified and understood before developing an upgrading plan. We will go into more detail on many of these conditions and ideas in subsequent chapters.

SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS IN VENEZUELA: APPEARANCE AND WAY OF LIFE

In Venezuela, squatter developments, called barrios, are populated by poor people who come from all over the country, South America, and the Caribbean. Barrios grew as cities within cities during the boom decades of the 1930s to the 1990s. These settlements, ignored for years by authorities, house approximately 50 percent of the Venezuelan population. Figure 1-1 shows a typical barrio in Caracas, Venezuela.

Even though most barrios share similar problems, not all barrios are the same. The oldest barrios can be well-established with solid communities that have earned the right to claim government protection for their existence. An area with a long history of occupation is eligible to receive the benefits of government renewal programs.

The topography of each site and the dimension and characteristics of the adjacent city produce differences in the urban patterns of barrios. Settlements can vary from organized, dispersed grids to seemingly disorganized groups of high-density, piled-up dwellings. Barrios with a grid pattern can evolve through the years and become part of the formal city. In irregular high-density occupations located on the hillsides, the upgrading process can be complex and difficult.

FIGURE 1-1

Squatter development in Venezuela. Barrio Petare, Caracas.

Photo by authors.

Government plans for improvement

For decades, the breadth and depth of the problems of squatter developments have represented a challenge for government planning agencies. During the last twenty years, urban planners in Venezuela assumed that squatter settlements would evolve and acquire the character of formal areas once urban improvements such as building roads and infrastructure took place. In legislation for national, regional, and local plans, cities were visualized as a whole. No distinctions were made for barrio areas other than considering them as part of a special plan where the same rules and ideas for developing the formal urban areas were applied. Implementing such special plans usually required destroying the existing order within a barrio and creating a completely new one.

Examples of projects that have changed the existing social and physical order of the barrio are Barrio 23 de Enero (figure 1-2) and Barrio Catuche (figure 1-3) in Caracas. In 23 de Enero, the relocation of the population to high-rise buildings produced radical changes in the social structure of the barrio. Today this residential area has one of the highest crime rates in the city. In Catuche, a more recent relocation project had better results, but still greatly affected the physical order of the barrio. Replacing makeshift housing with high-rise buildings and widening roads disrupted not only the built environment but the social structure of the settlement. Sustainability requires change that does not disrupt the established order while improving existing conditions for the