Barriadas in Lima

The city of Lima, the largest in Peru and also its capital, is comprised of well over 8 million people.  In fact, over 30% of the entire population of the country lives in Lima.  As a result, the city faces crushing demand for land and affordable housing.

This has created an axis of power within the city between the elite and the urban poor.  Both these groups fill important roles in establishing neighborhoods for their members, in the absence of state control or intervention.

In the 1940's, a very powerful migration movement began in Peru, which shifted large numbers of people from the rural and mountainous Andean region to the city of Lima.  These individuals found no housing available for them in Lima.  As a result, these new residents took up residence in "barriadas", areas that were informal settlements, located outside of the city limits.

This land was the least valuable, and the most dangerous in the Lima area - both from a crime standpoint, but also from an ecological perspective.  Located near rivers and in steep hilly terrain, the land was prone to flooding and severe demage from seismic activity.  They are similar to slums in the United States or shantytowns or favelas in Brazil.

Lima has not experienced high levels of urban unrest that would be expected in a city so divided between rich residents living in the financial district and those poor residents living in the barriadas.

The success of barriadas in Lima stemmed from the fact that the individuals who took over the land, while poor, were highly organized, and were able to set up systems to provide a network of services for their residents that the State was unable and unwilling to provide.  They were aided with the tacit help of Lima elites, who did not interfere with the establishment of the barriadas.  The wealthy of Lima understood that the success of the barriadas kept the poor segregated away from the elites in the financial center of Lima.  Furthermore, by encouraging the social organization of the poor within the barriadas, the needs of the poor were managed within the confines of their own community and did not spill into the better areas of the city.  As Ana Fernandez-Maldonado noted in her paper on the subject of barriadas in Lima, "Spatially, this process has produced orderly neighborourhoods, which follow the traditional urban grid used in other parts of the consolidated city.  Functionally, this process has effectively provided access to and and housing to great part of the city dwellers." (Barriadas and Elite in Lima, Peru: Recent Trends of Urban integration and Disintegration. 42nd ISoCaRP Congress, 2006).


Other than the obvious need for shelter, residents of the barriadas had need of food, clean running water, and health services.  Community organizers and their "grassroots organizations" established networks that provided these services to residents.  As Fernandex-Maldonado notes: "Barriadas experienced the flourishing of grassroots associateaions, suvival mechanisms, reciprocity networks, and new associative practices.  Greassrooots networks addressed survival issues, mainly food and health related matters.  They became a sort of 'informal welfare institutions', in view of the lack of public welfare."(Barriadas and Elite in Lima, Peru: Recent Trends of Urban integration and Disintegration. 42nd ISoCaRP Congress, 2006).  As a result, issues were managed within the barriadas, and did not spill over into the wealthier areas of town.  Thus, in Lima, one sees a very low incidence of gated communites, guarded neighborhoods, and houses physically separated from lower class neighborhoods by walls, and other barriers.

The development of barriadas in Lima presents an interesting case study of social problemsolving by both the rich and the poor in the absence of government intervention.