Abstract
In Latin American cities informal settlements and insecure land tenure are the result of an exclusionary planning and urban management system which fails to provide legal and secure housing for lower-income groups. Against this backdrop, the State implemented land-title and urban regulatory policies, in order to improve the housing conditions of these neighbourhoods and integrate their residents into the legal regime. This paper proposes to address the conflicts implied in the processes of urbanization and regularization of the villas of the city of Buenos Aires during the first government of Rodríguez Larreta (2015-2019). In the official political discourse the urbanization of informal settlements is considered one of the main axes of local management. Within this framework, institutional changes are being carried out, such as the creation of the Ministry of Social and Urban Integration. This regularization processes have raised many conflicts in the interaction between government decision-making and the needs of inhabitants of informal settlement. This conflicts are linked to a) the democratic participation of the inhabitants in the decision-making process at all stages, b) land management policies and domain regularization; c) the modalities and logic of relocation of inhabitants; d) the provision and access to infrastructure services and public spaces; e) the treatment of tenants and other more vulnerable groups. The paper will address three level of analysis: the network of actors linked to the urbanization process, the discrepancy between the official government discourse and the actions and the conflicts during the implementation of the urbanization and regularization policies.
