Introduction

In 2012, a report drafted by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) pointed out that Latin America was the most urbanised region of the world, with 23–75 per cent of its population living in cities. In 2010, the total population of the region totalled 588 million, with 468 million inhabitants living in cities. In Brazil alone, the largest country of the region, a third of the region's population is concentrated. The intense regional process of urbanisation occurred mostly in the second half of the 20th century, when in addition to intense rural– urban migration, most of the countries of the region went through a demographic transition process. With this, the cities of the region received 305 million new inhabitants in only a period of 40 years between 1970 and 2010 (UN-Habitat, 2012).

Beyond intense demographic growth, another characteristic common to Latin American countries is profound social inequality, with great income concentration and a significant portion of the population living below the poverty line. Within this scenario of demographic growth and deep social inequality, the formal real estate market is inaccessible to the low-income population, who have historically used informal practices to access housing. The intense urban growth of the last decades was based overall in the consolidation and densification of irregular and precarious settlements, whether irregular and clandestine peripheral allotments or favelas and invasions in central areas as well. What defines an irregular, clandestine or favela-like area varies in each one of the Latin American countries; however, all of those areas are characterised by housing precariousness, where buildings do not have licences, are not inspected by the authorities, have hazardous access to urban infrastructure (water supply, sanitary exhaustion, power, garbage removal) and are self-constructed. Pictures like those of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, the irregular allotments in permanent protection areas on the borders of water supplies to Sao Paulo's dams, the comunas in Medellin's slopes or the villas alongside the railway tracks in Buenos Aires are paradigmatic examples of the day-to-day housing of the low-income population in Latin American cities (see Figures 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3).