Housing Projects and Urban Challenges in the Americas-A North-South Historical Analysis

Catalog description

The physical production of housing is partially responsible for the development of social dynamics like urban inclusion and mobility, segregation and informality. While developmentalist theories commonly consider the Global North and South as essentially different realities, urban social problems are increasingly global and underline the historical deployment of a planetary form of urbanization. This is especially true in the case of Latin American architecture, epitomized as “exotic” or “underdeveloped” in popular culture, and which historically shares challenges like explosive population growth, suburbanization and urban decay with the Western hemisphere. To open, thus, architectural historical analysis to a global sphere of reflection, this seminar presents an overview of urban problems common to the North and South of the Americas between 1945-2000 – a period of unprecedented internationalization of urban politics, from the creation of the United Nations Charter to the Millenium Declaration. The seminar also explores how architectural housing projects that contain design and planning components have addressed urban challenges, and assesses how the physical solutions given to these problems fit the goals established by these urban programs. Through a comparative analysis of Latin American and North American cases, the seminar seeks to evaluate if urban policy outcomes are successful, vis-à-vis their architectural outputs. The ultimate goal of the course is to understand the role of housing projects as catalyzers of social reform, and to learn the lessons that these projects may bring to an urban and policy context.