Project Investigators: Luisa Sotomayor and Lina Brand Correa
Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant
Term: 2022-2025
This interdisciplinary research project (Canada, Colombia, urban planning, anthropology, development studies, and ecological economics) will investigate the implementation and effects of Colombia's market-based housing policy as it restructures the country's metropolitan peripheries. Specifically, the project aims to understand how commodified social housing affects peripheral urbanization, urban planning processes, and ultimately, residents' everyday lives. Adequate and affordable housing is a fundamental component of societal wellbeing (UN Sustainable Development Goal 11). Yet millions, both in the Global North and South, live in woefully inadequate housing or are burdened with insurmountable debt to access better shelter. In Colombia, the context post the 52-year armed conflict and a continuing migration crisis, are exacerbating the housing crisis. The project aims to: (1) elucidate state-market relations in the Colombian low-cost housing policy; (2) examine the national housing policy implementation and subsequent municipal planning responses in relation to the production of peri-urban residential projects; (3) assess the extent of residents' agency and citizenship; and (4) determine what types of needs are satisfied or hindered by the new apartment units and by collective life in the tower complexes.