The second question about how is people building informal settlements in Lima, corresponds to the following: What mobilizes local actors around the idea of change in private and public spaces? To answer the question we are identifying the daily practices of city-making in the periphery of Lima, described in Allen (2021)1. This author consider these practices as part of what is defined as ‘peripheral urbanization’ that involve the following mobilizing activities:

  1. Auto-Construction: The process by which citizens build their own homes and communities incrementally over time. This long-term, incremental approach is intertwined with the formal and informal economies, state regulations, and the availability of resources.

  2. Community Organization and Collective Action: Residents often organize into groups for mutual aid in building homes and infrastructure. This organization extends to claiming rights and negotiating with the state and other entities for access to basic services like water, electricity, and sanitation.

  3. Negotiation of Land and Housing: The narratives include the strategies employed by residents to secure land, often through informal markets or collective land occupations known as “invasiones.” These practices highlight the residents’ navigation through the legal and extra-legal aspects of land ownership and use in the city’s peripheries.

  4. Improvement of Living Conditions: Despite the lack of formal infrastructure, residents engage in collective efforts to improve their living conditions. This includes installing basic services, creating access paths, and building communal facilities.

  5. Political Engagement and Citizenship: Through their practices of city-making, residents engage in acts of citizenship. They claim their right to the city and negotiate their place within it, often challenging stigmatization and exclusion from stablished forms of public and private institutions and regulations.

All these five identified activities are operating within both the formal public and private dimensions where the informal construction of the city is being performed. These practices are not just about physical construction but also mobilizes local actors around the idea of change through social, political, and economic negotiations with public and private institutions as well. The above-mentioned activities highlight the residents’ resilience and agency in the face of marginalization, as they work to build their communities and claim their rights as citizens of Lima.

Reference

  1. Allen A. 2021. Navigating stigma through everyday city-making: Gendered trajectories, politics and outcomes in the periphery of Lima. Urban Studies 59(3): 490–508. <DOI: 10.1177/00420980211044409> ↩