This is a CTP of initiative: ICA/Fucvam (Uruguay)
The development of recycling style was an important Critical Tuning Point in the trajectory of FUCVAM. The form of co-operative housing by recycling represents a variable that is directly linked, physical and socially, in particular with the metropolitan area. Most major urban centres of Latin America are going through a process in which the neighbourhoods of downtown areas lost environmental quality due to overcrowding and deteriorating structures. This represents a contradiction in urban development: on one hand, there are underused and degraded downtown areas; on the other hand, the expulsion of the poorest sectors to the periphery, which generates high social costs. Therefore FUCVAM from the 1990s (and following a regional trend), began to intervene through co-housing recycling projects of urban buildings. Such interventions, were intended to generate constructive alternatives in a process of urban occupation that not find solution. Recycling of buildings encourages urban rehabilitation, from the participation of the population. With the arrival in Montevideo City Hall of Tabaré Vazquez, the community centers were created. It emerged in the Habitat Commission Center of Ciudad Vieja (Old Town) neighbourhood, the idea of create housing cooperatives, to address the serious shortcomings in terms of housing structures in the area. This was in the critical aspect of the problem of displacement of the population at that time. The target in the experimental plan was to keep the population at its location of origin and provide decent housing solutions in central areas of the city, well placed in terms of services. In this sense, recycling projects chose to incorporate experiences of marginalized groups in the field of active cooperative tradition since the Housing Act 1968 was established. For this purpose, the Municipality of Montevideo, created the Recycling Equipment and Urban Rehabilitation Service of Land and Housing. Today there are more than two dozen mutual aid cooperatives in Ciudad Vieja, completed, under construction or planned. However, the recycling system did not work equally well for all groups. Thus, it has been the case cooperatives created with vulnerable groups in the area, including prostitutes, who have failed because an economic insolvency of members. Recycling programs aim to articulate the combination of two factors: 1- the existing physical structure and the possibility of his rehabilitation, 2- social groups that demanding space for participation and self-management for habitat improvement.
In 1990s, the Broad Front won the Montevideo City Hall and created greater social and progressive policies in the city. In this favorable context, some NGOs proposed a self-managed interdisciplinary intervention. The municipal government initiated a several actions from demonstration programs to prove that it was possible to extend the experiences of mutual aid to recycling operations. Thus, the Municipality made programs as "Casa Verde" (Green House), and "Ana Monterroso" which were the first social and architectural experiences of recycling. "Intervention forms are quite varied: there are cases of accumulation points throughout the process, in other cases the needs of families, etc. were considered; there are different possibilities". Social movements were very important in the new project. Especially some groups of young members of cooperatives who thought that the recycling projects were the best choice for urban housing. In Montevideo, the recycling program (rehabilitation) of the Mortgage Bank of Uruguay (public building) would be a stimulus to increasing middle class in Ciudad Vieja, at the same time, in the last ten years, had lost more than 20% of its population, mainly the poorest. In the period 1985-1990 the local government and the Mortgage Bank of Uruguay signed an agreement by which declared Ciudad Vieja area of priority interest when granting credit for the rehabilitation of buildings, for which specific lines that financed were created private and public promotions, new works and recycling. In 2004, the European Economic Community supports housing cooperatives recycling, from a training program for workers for restoration and building maintenance. Institutes of Technical Assistance (IAT, for its acronym in Spanish), as consultants-trainers, they adapted the patterns for mutual aid cooperatives to the new style of intervention. The IAT played an important role in creating the new conditions of recycling cooperatives. The other key player in the process was the Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment Secretary of the National Government. Among the actions of the City hall, highlighted the creation of Portfolio of Houses, whether municipally owned or acquisition (by purchase or expropriation). Another action was the creation of the Special Plan for Protection and Improvement of the Ciudad Vieja, which allowed have properties available for the experiences. In 2000, the city government recognized the need to incorporate to the financing system of cooperatives, recycling style in big urban centres.
Since the nineties, both in Mediterranean region and Latin America, investment in historic urban centres begun to be clearly perceived as a new phenomenon. However, it is not until the first decade of the XXIth century, when scientists work on the forms that multiply this process and its effects. In the Spanish State stand out from early cases of Madrid and Barcelona, then to proliferate studies on cities of lower rank. Since the nineties appear on the transformation of emblematic historic centres in Brazil, while in the rest of Latin America the interest in this type of process was noted already in the 2000s. In Montevideo, the interventions was proposed in what constitutes the whole of the old town, called Ciudad Vieja, and its main suburbs who would welcome the immigration of Spaniards and Italians around 1900. The Ciudad Vieja remained a great demographic weight on the whole city until the late nineteenth century, welcoming inmigrants in the port and working like as the main commercial and financial center. Until 1990s, the housing policy followed the dynamics of all public policy, guided by the neoliberal logic, in that the state split with social problem solving, giving all to the market place. Nationally, the opening of the economy and privatization of public enterprises marked the period. The government began a period of decline in welfare state policies, harming the living conditions of workers in Uruguay. "There is a need to build capacity to exploit the potential that the group itself has. In this sense the technological aspect is very important, try to produce items, components that are easily usable is a challenge." Economic policy mobilized society and began a phase of protests by social movements, including FUCVAM also highlighted. On the one hand, the policy of the city of Montevideo approached to FUCVAM and co-housing for mutual aid, in the other, the national government attacked the achievements of the cooperative movement with neoliberal economic policies.
The process of development of housing cooperatives mutual Aid with recycling mode did not generate opposing social groups. The City Hall, FUCVAM, the social movements and the council and architects and urbanists, all approved the recycling style as a way of intervention. However, the proposal represented a debate on the right of access to the city. At that level, recycling represented an opportunity to position the debate. A central area provides a known consolidate hardware and an appropriate urban space. This represents a great potential for social groups that solve their practical problems and their conflicts in a place that they historically belong. In all experiences of cooperatives, neighbourhood institutions participated, as neighbourhood councils or clubs.
On another level, the proposed recycling of degraded urban complex represents an alternative to gentrification. Currently, major Latin-American cities are regenerating their urban centres. After decades of decline, demand for the revival of run down, but historically important, areas was accompanied by the negative social consequences that result from regeneration: gentrication and displacement of the most poor. Therefore, the search for urban regeneration policies preserving social justice is of major interest.
Gentrification is a phenomenon that promotes that the residents whit economic capacity of or commercial ventures is that determines its location and stay in a sector, while households with lower consumption capacity and less profitable activities tend to be relegated to the fields less in demand. This implies that the poor will always be displaced depending on the needs of capital accumulation or changes in the preferences of solvent groups
In the 1990s, a new phenomenon begin: the eviction of taken buildings by the urban underclass, especially the old abandoned hotels. Occupants were more than two hundred families who were evicted and relocated by judicial proceedings "ten kilometres from Ciudad Vieja." In this context, many people leaving their houses and returned to the neighbourhood, usually to an equally precarious house. In the five years, between 1990 to 1995, took place a pilot program of recycling and urban rehabilitation of the downtown area, by mutual aid and self-management . The fundamental cause that drove the process was the finding of failed previous projects.
"Until then it sought to combat social marginalization of the place by creating neighbourhoods on the periphery, which is systematically transferred to the affected population. This process immediately presented pockets of marginalization and poor results in urban and housing proposals." The failure of the policy became evident when further found that there had been a rise in the construction of houses because of the excessive costs of urbanizing areas away from the city, having to provide them with all the basic resources. Similarly, they showed significant gaps in the houses of the Ciudad Vieja that caused new outbreaks of social marginalization. At the end of this period, the Workshop Seminars on rehabilitation were organized in Central Areas of Montevideo, intending to mature and outsource the process of discussion on the possibilities of housing intervention in these areas. Discussions focused on funding issues and the legal framework.
In this historical path, the style of recycling of cooperatives for mutual aid was anticipated by FUCVAM, on regional trends in rehabilitation and re-functionalization of buildings. This strategy had already been proposed, 10 years ago, by some currents of urban planners as a intervention model in big cities. This approach emerged in Latin America as strategy for recovery and reoccupation of social housing complexes of the 1950s and 1970s. “We not really anticipate recycling, we generate, following some proposals of Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo. In these countries, there were groups of architects and experts in habitat that they saw recycling as a form of reintegration into the neighbourhoods. The physical and social transformation, he did not come from outside, but the neighbours.”
Recycling experience provided many lessons in the trajectory of FUCVAM. Around the recycling style, it developed a management model in which the group participated in all instances: discussion of organizational and technological proposal, the organization of production (mutual aid), the management and administration of the work, the design patterns of coexistence, etc. The lessons from these experiences suggest understanding and discussion in all the physical aspects of buildings to recycle and its environment, its structure, dimensions, possibilities, utilization, space and materials. Another aspect of learning was the reflection on the historical and heritage aspects, the modes of use and space utilization are different from those of a traditional cooperative. "The user works on self-management of the whole process and the construction of housing for all. Mutual aid, work is in teams and all tasks are carried out regardless of and without knowing what will be the house that will touch everyone." The recycling style raised an easily appropriable Construction system by groups, quick assembly and the power of mutual aid. That reduced the specialized work and valued the self-construction of users, the main pillar in the history of FUCVAM. "There is a need to build capacity to exploit the potential that the group itself has and technological aspect is very important, try to produce items, components that are easily usable is a challenge. In recycling, the basic structure of the build is given, then there is a task of disposing of all that is in poor condition, strengthen the structure, walls; handled the structure and then to desing within that space. The development of appropriate techniques and technologies is a key work with groups because learning involves a significant saving of resources." This was a great learning experience for FUCVAM and allowed him to join the government of the city of Montevideo to coordinate a strategy together for recycling projects, and socially, to present its position on the subject. A central aspect of style recycling level of learning is the importance of the establishment of cooperatives as a means of improving living conditions in general in the city. The neighbourhoods in which co-housing projects developed are important evidence of this. "In the case for example of cooperatives we did on the northern edge of the historic center, COVICIVI, it generated a remarkable transformation at the level of use of space, there was a displacement of criminal activities leading to an appropriation of settler families of the Old City. Then, the Municipality of Montevideo worked hard on conditioning of public space." Finally, the academy (articulate with FUCVAM), used some learnings of recycling style, which evaluated the experiences in various studies and specialization courses of university.
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