A new approach for venezuelan social housing in the urban border of Simón Bolívar park
Heimary S. Barreto Castillo
A new approach for venezuelan social housing in the urban border of Simón Bolívar park.
Rel. Matteo Robiglio, Maya Suarez. Politecnico di Torino, Corso di laurea magistrale in Architettura Costruzione Città, 2015
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
The term social housing in Europe has two possible connotations according to the 2012 edition of the “Encyclopedia of Housing”. The first refers to all types of housing that receive some form of public subsidy or social assistance, either directly or indirectly, which can include tax relief on mortgage interest, tax shelters for homeownership, subsidies to builders, depreciation allowances for investments in residential properties, or below-cost provision of collective public services (roads, electricity, water or sewers) for housing. This definition is very inclusive, namely whenever the private housing stock receives some public subsidies, it should be included in the social housing sector. The second definition largely refers to traditional public housing, namely housing subsidized by the state and social rented housing, but also includes new forms of publicly supported and non-market housing, such as cooperatives, rent-geared-to-income, limited-dividend and non-profit housing provided by social agencies, community groups, non-profit private firms and political organizations other than governments. Social housing has its origin in England in the late eighteenth century as an initiative of factories in response to overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and disorder in which the working class was living at that time. Later in the first half of the twentieth century the concept of social housing (for workers and middle class) is centralized by the governments of Europe in response to devastation caused by the world wars and the need to provide housing for many people. From the second half of the twentieth century differences between Western and Eastern Europe in management of social housing becomes more evident because differences between economic models (Capitalism and Communism respectively). While in the West social housing diversified and devolved to include previously excluded groups (poor, disabled, etc.), in Eastern Europe housing construction was highly centralized, politicized and inefficient to respond to all sectors of society. With the collapse of communism in the nineties, these countries (after a heavily process of privatizations) have been gradually incorporated into the construction of social housing as in the rest of Europe. Although Venezuelan social housing was very influenced by European concepts and techniques, the reasons why it was begun were radically different. In the early twentieth century Venezuela passed from being an agricultural country into a major oil exporter. The new industrial and economic centers led to a process of internal (from rural to urban) and external migration (from several European countries). The cities were not prepared for this rapid growth, so people began to build informal housing. The belated response of governments was social housing construction. However, despite efforts the demand was always greater than supply, resulting in the establishment of barrios in the major cities of the country. In the first decade of the 21st century social housing construction was the lowest in the history of Venezuela, despite having a social-communist government. For this reason in 2011 the same government promised to repay the “historic debt” of housing for the poorest creating a social housing plan called “Gran Mision Vivienda Venezuela” (GMVV). This plan wants ending the housing deficit by 2019. Despite being a very ambitious project, which handles many resources, this has been criticized by experts from different areas. From an economic point of view, it has many similarities to social housing applied in the former communist Europe, being highly centralized (government-dependent) and politicized. In addition non-governmental organizations claim that they are creating ghettos because in practice only people with low resources related to government policies can access to this houses. Finally at the architectural level many of the projects do not take into account the context in which are built and are of very low quality construction. In this project i propose a social housing complex, taking into account open building criteria, differences between Venezuelan family organizations and it is directed not only to the poor but also to the middle class to avoid the current social segregation.
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