The Center of Economic and Social Development: Urban Innovation Project for Requalification of the Habitat

Abstract

Thinking about people’s habitats suggests understanding the relationships between people and their context, the territory they inhabit, the settlement processes that eventually become neighborhoods and that they were somehow marginalized from the city. But, marginalized from what? From different ways of life? From development opportunities? The answers allow us to rethink habitats, to get to know communities and their context, to understand the goal and means which contribute to the processes of human development that go farther than space and time, to praise the idea of dialogue and collaboration between different professions and activities, to achieve comprehensive interventions to remedy and promote community development in all areas. This takes us back to thinking about the possibility of creating a social production of habitats, which is based on processes of creating habitable spaces such as productive housing and communal facilities, made under the control of self-producing, social agents, companies and institutions, which implicate a high level of organization. For this it is necessary to have a comprehensive program and people working together as a team.