Improving Informal Settlements: Ideas from Latin America by John Beardsley and Christian Werthmann

Dontemporary designers in Latin America are attempting to upgrade informal settlements physically without destroying them socially, saving what they can of their physical structure while alleviating environmental and social problems ranging from inadequate public space and housing to unemployment, insecure land tenure, and poor sanitation.

The selection uses landscape as the particular lens through which to examine these settlements: their occupation of marginal lands; their typical separation from urban landscape infrastructure; and their lack of public facilities for economic, cultural, or recreational activities. Landscape is conceived both as the primary problem in these communities and as the main opportunity for intervention and improvement.