As earlier chapters have demonstrated, one of the key issues which determines the opportunity for self-help consolidation in housing is the availability of land. Where land is accessible to the poor and tenure is guaranteed in law or in practice, home improvements will usually take place. In none of our three cities is land freely available. To obtain land, even poorly located land, is a struggle in each city. The purpose of this chapter is broadly to explain how the process of land acquisition takes place and to explain the differences and implications of allocation mechanisms in each city.

First, we examine how land is allocated to the poor as a group in society. What are the mechanisms by which the poor receive the ‘worst’ land and the more powerful and affluent classes receive the more desirable areas? Specifically, we consider the relationship between the coventional market for land, and its associated construction industry, and the low-income land market. In considering this relationship we must perforce examine the ways in which the state arbitrates and intervenes in the necessarily competitive process of land allocation.

Second, we examine in more detail the overt and covert intervention of the state in the process of land allocation. What is the purpose of residential zoning, building standards and urban perimeters, and how do they affect the market for land?

Once land has been acquired, communities petition the respective public utilities for services. In this chapter we are concerned with explaining how these services are supplied and distributed, the procedures of the agencies, the power they have, how they use that power, and how successfully they service the city populations.

In the first section, we consider certain theories that explain the growth of government intervention in the urban economy. How has the government come to be involved in these areas? Has it been stimulated by economic or by social considerations, has intervention been in the field of collective consumption or collective production? Has government commitment to urban infrastructure and services generally increased or decreased? Has government servicing of poor people been widespread, motivated by a genuine desire to improve living standards, or has it been limited, the outcome of campaigns to maintain legitimacy and social control? In the second section, we provide a resumé of the organization of servicing and government activity in each city. Which services are provided by government and which by the private sector? In the third section, we provide an institutional guide to the organization of servicing in each city, relating service activity to the structure of government in each country and city. In the fourth section, we consider how government agencies perform their role. What are the main characteristics of the agencies supplying services to the poor?

State intervention and the urban poor: major issues concerning housing, planning and servicing in Latin American cities

The main objective of this study is to improve understanding of the social conditions and the role of the poor within urban society in Latin America. More specifically, the aim is to understand how the needs of the urban poor with respect to housing and servicing are articulated and satisfied. The study examines the aims, development and implementation of government policies towards low-income housing dwellers, tries to relate those policies to the wider interests of the state and the constraints within which it acts, and examines governmental success in meeting the needs of the poor. We examine the needs of the poor, their understanding of the main constraints on barrio servicing and improvement, their involvement in community organizations and the role that the community and its leaders play in influencing state action. Since housing and servicing directly impinge on the interests of politicians, bureaucrats, landowners, and real-estate developers, as well as those of the poor, they represent critical elements in the relationship between the poor and the wider urban society. Essentially, therefore, the research is interested in how resources are allocated within urban society and how political and administrative power operates at the municipal level.

The research was conducted in three Latin American cities, Bogotá, Mexico City and Valencia, as a reaction to the dominant trend in urban studies to concentrate on a single centre.

The different responses to housing and servicing in the three cities cannot be adequately understood without examining the nature and policies of the state both at the national and the local level. For land, housing and servicing are only elements in the total relationship between the state and the poor. Without some understanding of recent trends in economic and social change and of state participation in that process, our explanation of policy towards the urban poor is bound to be superficial. For this reason the chapter examines first the broad patterns of economic growth in each country, second, the nature of each country's political and social development and, finally, the economic, social and political characteristics of each city. This resumé is included in the hope that individual state responses to the specific issues of land, housing and servicing for the poor can be related in the later chapters to the wider issue of how the state conceives the whole dynamic and objective of development and change.

The national economies

There are numerous similarities between the Colombian, Mexican and Venezuelan economies. All showed quite high rates of growth during the late sixties and early seventies (table 2). All have a common dependence on the export of primary products, though the nature of the commodity and its role in the national development process differs.