Social housing designed and built according to evidence-based optimal practices

Drawing from both local tradition and innovative urban tools, urban fabric can be built to connect positively to the user instead of according to some abstract geometrical ideal. Failure to proceed in this enlightened fashion usually leads to sterile geometries that can never accommodate social life. Unfortunately, this was the way social housing was designed and built for decades, following simplistic notions of order and efficiency. That approach is not only outdated but has been shown to destroy society. We have thought out the multiple factors that play into reforming the system, emphasizing where drastic change is necessary — in the philosophy and ideology of urbanism — and where the existing system — in legal and construction practices — can continue to work with only minor adjustments. Hopefully, a wholesale renewal of city building methods can be implemented while retaining much of the existing institutional framework. 

Armature of Services

Following is a rule-based layout strategy that one of us (AMD) has observed working in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. It offers a template that planners can work with: a simple but effective armature on which a sanitary and humane settlement may self-organize.

What follows are guidelines for the MINIMUM income favela. There are more rules for the next step up in income, including the accommodation of cars. But anything less than this set of rules tends not to work, so they form a core upon which other rules are added.

1. The government must plat lots and grant ownership with paper and recorded deeds. These can begin with “notional” lots that can be defined later through a “generative” process, and surveyed and recorded afterward.
2. Lots should be within blocks defined by a network of street reservations. Each block must have a pedestrian alley reservation at the rear of all the lots. Lots may vary in size and shape but should not be less that 6 m wide and 20 m deep.
3. The government must grade the land within the block so that it drains to the street. The streets must in turn be graded to drain away from the inhabited area.
4. The government must build concrete sidewalks on both sides of the street reservation (but not necessarily pave the streets). The channel formed between the sidewalks will contain the draining rainwater. The streets also provide firebreaks.
5. At a minimum of one place on the alley, there must be a tall pole with electrical supply from which the residents can connect themselves and freely use the electricity. Do the same with a couple of clean water spigots. There should be one large latrine (with gender separation) per block. One can start taxing collectively for these services once construction is well under way.
6. The lots, as they are built out, should retain a clear passage from alley to street. This encourages rooms with windows and also allows the lot and the block to drain to the street.
7. The residents will construct their buildings themselves, at their own rate; but they must build at the edge of the sidewalk first. The rear comes later. One can require that the frontage wall be concrete block. Their roofs must not drain to a neighboring lot.
8. Corner lots are reserved for shops. All lots can be live/work units.
9. Non-criminal commercial initiatives and private transit operations must not be prohibited (even better to actively encourage them).
10. The various government and resident responsibilities listed above are established by a simple contract: “The government will do this … the resident will do this …”
11. It is possible to ask the residents to pay for the lots, after construction is done, a small quantity at a time.

In addition, there are many social control issues that we are not going to deal with here, but which need to be empirically observed. This is only a physical code, and thus only part of the whole solution that will make the project livable. The establishment of legal boundaries is a government function. But it should not be assumed that we propose to do this first, as a top-down act. Laying out the plots involves preliminary owner participation. The really remarkable thing about the morphology of owner-planned places is the power of their self-organization, which is the process that Alexander’s generative codes are trying to exploit.

In the following sections, we offer practical suggestions for making projects work. Section 10 suggests appointing a project manager to direct the application of generative codes. Section 11 argues for using appropriate materials: cheap but permanent; durable but flexible enough to shape; solid but friendly to sight and touch. We also discuss the proper use of industrial modules such as a plumbing box. Section 12 broaches the topic of funding a project, recommending the involvement of a non-governmental organization that focuses on the small scale. Section 13 is political, delving into how one can best cooperate with existing systems geared to producing social housing that follow very different, industrial typologies. Section 14 offers strategies for getting residents to maintain their settlements after they are built.