Abstract
Latin America’s urban population increased rapidly after 1940 during a period of continuous economic growth. Booming populations were accommodated by a massive increase in the housing stock, most of it built through some kind of ‘self-help’ process.1 The consequent expansion of this self-help accommodation as a proportion of the total urban housing stock has often been denounced; many have claimed that it demonstrates how housing standards have fallen. In fact, a case can be made that self-help construction often improved housing conditions. Home ownership became more common, rental tenure declined, and generalized overcrowding became less endemic. If service levels often failed to keep up with the proliferation of self-help settlement, few cities experienced an overall decline in service levels through time.
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© 1993 Christopher Abel and Colin M. Lewis
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Gilbert, A. (1993). Self-Help Housing during Recession. In: Abel, C., Lewis, C.M. (eds) Welfare, Poverty and Development in Latin America. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11325-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11325-5_5
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