The metaphysics of geographical phenomenology

It cannot be denied that the founding and guiding intuitions of a phenomenological approach in geography as it exists at the moment are in the main sound and well intentioned. Such a claim is justified alone in terms of the re-thinking of the positivist emphasis in geographical science it has occasioned, a point already made by Gregory (1978a). Yet, as the previous chapter sought to show, there must be a question as to whether this enterprise is at all phenomenological in the ways it claims to be. Furthermore it should be fairly apparent by now that while these intuitions may have been sound and the results significant, we cannot claim that ‘geographical phenomenology’ has in any way moved towards a resolution of how human science is to reconstitute its scientific conceptions away from positivism and towards some positive scientific perspective on man's world. The waters have been stirred, but visibility – as a result – remains poor. In one crucial way the situation has not improved at all; the radical critique of objectivism and naturalism occasioned by ‘geographical phenomenology’ in its denial of the tenets of positivism and logical empiricism has been transcended in the direction of an equally radical and naive subjectivism, accepting multiple worldviews, unable to develop rigorous methods or intersubjectively acceptable criteria for evaluation, and in which the taken-for-granted world of the subject is to be examined, but not that of the researcher:

Phenomenology

Phenomenology seeks to ground the relationship between the scientific and the pre-scientific, the theoretical and the everyday, ontologically.

What is phenomenology?

In juxtaposing ‘geographical phenomenology’ to phenomenology, and in moving from the former to the latter, the claim that the two are not the same is implicit. Thus, we now need to move from what passes for phenomenology in the geographical literature, towards what is actually the case in phenomenology itself. In other words, and with all due respect to those geographers who have gone before us in this area, we need to allow phenomenology to show itself from itself once again.

As earlier chapters have demonstrated, one of the key issues which determines the opportunity for self-help consolidation in housing is the availability of land. Where land is accessible to the poor and tenure is guaranteed in law or in practice, home improvements will usually take place. In none of our three cities is land freely available. To obtain land, even poorly located land, is a struggle in each city. The purpose of this chapter is broadly to explain how the process of land acquisition takes place and to explain the differences and implications of allocation mechanisms in each city.

First, we examine how land is allocated to the poor as a group in society. What are the mechanisms by which the poor receive the ‘worst’ land and the more powerful and affluent classes receive the more desirable areas? Specifically, we consider the relationship between the coventional market for land, and its associated construction industry, and the low-income land market. In considering this relationship we must perforce examine the ways in which the state arbitrates and intervenes in the necessarily competitive process of land allocation.

Second, we examine in more detail the overt and covert intervention of the state in the process of land allocation. What is the purpose of residential zoning, building standards and urban perimeters, and how do they affect the market for land?

Once land has been acquired, communities petition the respective public utilities for services. In this chapter we are concerned with explaining how these services are supplied and distributed, the procedures of the agencies, the power they have, how they use that power, and how successfully they service the city populations.

In the first section, we consider certain theories that explain the growth of government intervention in the urban economy. How has the government come to be involved in these areas? Has it been stimulated by economic or by social considerations, has intervention been in the field of collective consumption or collective production? Has government commitment to urban infrastructure and services generally increased or decreased? Has government servicing of poor people been widespread, motivated by a genuine desire to improve living standards, or has it been limited, the outcome of campaigns to maintain legitimacy and social control? In the second section, we provide a resumé of the organization of servicing and government activity in each city. Which services are provided by government and which by the private sector? In the third section, we provide an institutional guide to the organization of servicing in each city, relating service activity to the structure of government in each country and city. In the fourth section, we consider how government agencies perform their role. What are the main characteristics of the agencies supplying services to the poor?

State intervention and the urban poor: major issues concerning housing, planning and servicing in Latin American cities

The main objective of this study is to improve understanding of the social conditions and the role of the poor within urban society in Latin America. More specifically, the aim is to understand how the needs of the urban poor with respect to housing and servicing are articulated and satisfied. The study examines the aims, development and implementation of government policies towards low-income housing dwellers, tries to relate those policies to the wider interests of the state and the constraints within which it acts, and examines governmental success in meeting the needs of the poor. We examine the needs of the poor, their understanding of the main constraints on barrio servicing and improvement, their involvement in community organizations and the role that the community and its leaders play in influencing state action. Since housing and servicing directly impinge on the interests of politicians, bureaucrats, landowners, and real-estate developers, as well as those of the poor, they represent critical elements in the relationship between the poor and the wider urban society. Essentially, therefore, the research is interested in how resources are allocated within urban society and how political and administrative power operates at the municipal level.

The research was conducted in three Latin American cities, Bogotá, Mexico City and Valencia, as a reaction to the dominant trend in urban studies to concentrate on a single centre.

The different responses to housing and servicing in the three cities cannot be adequately understood without examining the nature and policies of the state both at the national and the local level. For land, housing and servicing are only elements in the total relationship between the state and the poor. Without some understanding of recent trends in economic and social change and of state participation in that process, our explanation of policy towards the urban poor is bound to be superficial. For this reason the chapter examines first the broad patterns of economic growth in each country, second, the nature of each country's political and social development and, finally, the economic, social and political characteristics of each city. This resumé is included in the hope that individual state responses to the specific issues of land, housing and servicing for the poor can be related in the later chapters to the wider issue of how the state conceives the whole dynamic and objective of development and change.

The national economies

There are numerous similarities between the Colombian, Mexican and Venezuelan economies. All showed quite high rates of growth during the late sixties and early seventies (table 2). All have a common dependence on the export of primary products, though the nature of the commodity and its role in the national development process differs.

We now focus our attention at the barrio level and examine the structure of the community organizations that have emerged to defend and develop settlement interests. The need for brevity obliges us to concentrate our analysis around two key issues. First, how much impact does community mobilization have upon the upgrading process? What is the extent of resident participation and how far does participation significantly affect the likelihood of servicing? Second, what governs the response that the state makes to community-development issues? Here our concern is to identify the motives of the state and to account for the way in which it handles community issues. Is the state basically sympathetic, attempting to help the poor as much as it can with limited resources, or is it concerned with maximizing social control by containing demand making to acceptable (and probably low) levels? Our aim is to understand the forms and levels of community participation relating them to the structural characteristics of each city and society.

Few observers doubt the potential value of community participation in development although many question its practice in Latin America. Such a paradox has become increasingly obvious through time. A major gulf exists between reality and the way in which community action and participation should operate. Such a statement is true whatever the political stance of the observer. That right and left might agree about the state of community participation is at first sight surprising.

The details of the settlements are summarized in table 1 on page 24 and the locations are depicted in figure 2 on page 26.

Bogotá – Atenas

Atenas is located on the mountain slopes along the road which leaves Bogotá for Villavicencio. Most of the settlement is on sloping terrain although there are several relatively flat sections. It is largely surrounded by low-income pirate urbanizations although there is still a limited amount of open land to the northwest. The settlement was developed in two parts beginning in the middle sixties, the first of which is now largely occupied and serviced, the second of which is less consolidated, lacks services and contains open ground.

The pirate urbanizer divided land which had been inherited by his father in the late twenties. He began to sell this land in the early sixties and provided certain services in an attempt to comply with the then ruling planning code: standpipes, road layout with paving stones and rough street surfacing. He later became a member of the Bogotá council and was identified with a campaign to service not only Atenas but several surrounding settlements. He used his contacts in the Liberal party to obtain services for these communities. He lost his position on the council in 1970 and indeed lost political influence generally. This has to some extent affected the recent servicing of the settlement.

Most of our findings have been presented in the summaries at the end of each chapter and will not be repeated here. There are, however, a number of general statements which need to be made about our results. In particular, we would like to take this opportunity to emphasize those elements of our work which we believe to be original, affect planning practice or which warrant further development.

Our work has clearly underlined the point made in the recent social-science literature that issues such as housing, land use and servicing cannot sensibly be isolated from the wider social, economic and political environment. In the past, planners too often tried to separate these issues in order to better resolve urban problems; the practical mistakes that have been made often reflect that error. Work in the social sciences during the seventies has clearly shown that such a separation is unjustifiable. In this study we have tried to place the land, housing and servicing issues facing the poor in their broad socio-economic context. We have emphasized how home improvement depends upon income levels of the poor and upon the costs of land and materials. We have shown how tenure is less a matter of individual choice than an outcome of the broad working both of the capitalist land market and of the action of the state. We have demonstrated how methods of servicing low-income settlement vary with the nature of bureaucracy and political practice in each country.