Urban politics and popular habitat. New dynamics of private land management in Pehuajó, Argentina

Abstract

At the end of the 20th century, in Argentina, the processes of State reform with the decentralization of competences to provinces and municipalities in areas linked to health, education, and housing, brought with it the problem that the decentralization of competences was not matched by the transfer of resources. Today, other claims are added in local spaces related to access to urban land and decent housing, environmental sustainability, gender equity, narrowing of the digital divide among others. The lack of comprehensive habitat policy planning for lower-income, deposed, migrant, service-employed people in consolidated families or in the city deepens social inequality and environmental degradation in the city. This work proposes the analysis of the new dynamics of access to land in a legal way implemented from the State in Pehuajó, Argentina, and, for this purpose, puts a critical focus on the use of normative instruments in relation to the incorporation of private land as well as policies for the inclusion of the population of low resources of popular neighborhoods. The proposal is articulated as an affiliated interpretation with the speech of the Program for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Lincoln Institute for Soil Policy. From a self-defined as progressive perspective, it applies new instruments to urban land management with the function of preventing informality and thus having a more inclusive, better-financed city, distributing public services and cargo more equitably, and choosing the most appropriate geo-technologies.