Improvised cities : architecture, urbanization & innovation in Peru / Helen Gyger.

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Intro; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. The Challenge of the Affordable House, 1954-1958; 2. The Barriada under the Microscope, 1955-1957; 3. A Profession in Development, 1957-1960; 4. Mediating Informality, 1961-1963; Color Plates; 5. World Investments, Productive Homes, 1961-1967; 6. Building a Better Barriada, 1968-1975; 7. Revolutions in Self-Help, 1968-1980; 8. Other Paths, 1980-1986; Epilogue; Glossary; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Beginning in the 1950s, an explosion in rural-urban migration dramatically increased the population of cities throughout Peru, leading to an acute housing shortage and the proliferation of self-built shelters clustered in barriadas, or squatter settlements. Improvised Cities examines the history of aided self-help housing, or technical assistance to self-builders, which took on a variety of forms in Peru from 1954 to 1986. While the postwar period saw a number of trial projects in aided self-help housing throughout the developing world, Peru was the site of significant experiments in this field and pioneering in its efforts to enact a large-scale policy of land tenure regularization in improvised, unauthorized cities. Gyger focuses on three interrelated themes: the circumstances that made Peru a fertile site for innovation in low-cost housing under a succession of very different political regimes; the influences on, and movements within, architectural culture that prompted architects to consider self-help housing as an alternative mode of practice; and the context in which international development agencies came to embrace these projects as part of their larger goals during the Cold War and beyond.

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