INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT IN QUITO

Abstract

In the city of Quito, Ecuador, the informal occupation of rural and conservation areas, and their conversion into urban land, grew since the 1970s, through invasions and sale of lots in informal markets, mainly in the contours of the sprawling city. Hundreds of thousands of homes, many precarious, have been erected over agricultural, livestock, ravines and conservation areas, even in zones considered of high risk. This form of human settlement has occurred at the same time as other planned and regulated by the Municipality processes.
We traced the trajectories of these informal settlements, especially their relationship with nature and their environmental conditions, through secondary sources, texts and maps of the Municipality of Quito, observations, informal conversations, semi structured interviews and social cartographies in three neighborhoods.
We observed that the dynamics and environmental impacts of these settlements in their immediate surroundings, and in the urban territory in a broad sense, have constructed a high negative urban resilience. Informal neighborhoods, sometimes tolerated, sometimes encouraged under incomplete arguments of right to the city, have intensified the socio-environmental vulnerability to earthquakes, volcanism, floods, mass movements, fires, erosion and pollution. And they have exacerbated the degrading action of nature and the pollution of the environment, which in itself implies urban expansion and the growth of its population.