From rural displaced to urban segregated. Free housing program for victims of the armed conflict in Cali

Abstract

This article presents the case of the Llano Verde neighborhood, the only free housing project built in Cali, Colombia, within the framework of a national program that included among its objectives the reparation of victims of the armed conflict. The guiding hypothesis of this paper is that planning and housing policies in Cali have been used as legitimate mechanisms to reproduce patterns of segregation typical of the colonial era. However, in recent decades, in addition to frequent differentiating features such as ethnicity and class, the category of displaced person, an official denomination that alludes to forced migrants who are victims of the armed conflict, has been added. By applying a multidimensional and multiscale approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods, this work investigates territorial and socioeconomic aspects of the case study based on a review of urban and environmental conditions, connectivity for labor opportunities, and direct and symbolic violence. The results show that planning and social housing projects in Cali have not only failed to reverse socio-spatial segregation but have directly contributed to the perpetuation of this phenomenon.

Keywords:
Urban planning; Socio-spatial segregation; Conflict victims; Ethnicity; Urban violence