Just a half hour walk from the Casa Rosada is the port. There, a stone's throw from the center of Buenos Aires, in the Padre Múgica neighborhood, 14,300 families live in the most complete exclusion and deprived of essential urban services such as access to drinking water, electricity and basic sanitation.
The popular neighborhood has always been there, visible to everyone. Its people, too. But it was not until 2016 that it was known for sure how many people lived there. That year, the Argentine Government, with the support of CEILING, the Union UTEP and Caritasformed the National Registry of Popular Neighborhoods (RENABAP) to include informal inhabitants in the national census, and grant them rights like all citizens. “When, with few resources, but a lot of organization, we began the National Survey of Popular Neighborhoods, we did not imagine that we would see concrete results so quickly,” says Fernanda Miño, former secretary of Socio-Urban Integration of the Nation. In total, they have already detected more than 6,400 neighborhoods where 1.1 million families live, but their efforts are now in danger. The new government of far-right Javier Milei has integrated the Ministry of Social Development into a new portfolio, called Human Capital. If it stops having funds, RENABAP is in danger of disappearing and returning more than five million Argentines to ostracism.
Popular neighborhoods, also known as informal settlements, are often left off the radar of local authorities. The inhabitants of these areas, not having legal rights over their homes, face the deprivation of essential urban services such as access to drinking water, electricity and basic sanitation. This lack of recognition by the government not only leads to the exclusion of vital urban services, but also results in their omission from censuses and development plans, which can lead to serious consequences, such as mass evictions.
The UN estimates that one in four people live in these informal areas, but in most countries, due to their absence in censuses, the exact number of people residing in these settlements is not known. This complicates the planning and execution of health campaigns, such as vaccination campaigns. Despite the efforts of local organizations and NGOs to highlight these conditions of poverty, obtaining accurate and systematic data on these populations remains a major challenge.
However, Argentina has become a leading nation that has implemented relevant measures in this area. RENABAP has provided residents of informal settlements with protection, under the 'Popular Neighborhoods Law', which grants the 'Family Housing Certificate' that accredits citizens' ownership of their homes. “We managed to unanimously approve the Law that, among other things, authorized the National Executive Branch to create a Trust to fund the integration works and the acquisition of land,” says Miño, proudly. For the first time, a national policy was launched that finances and monitors works to integrate informal settlements in all Argentine provinces, while at the same time creating new urban land to respond to the younger generations.
However, the changing character and rapid growth of these settlements represents a constant challenge for RENABAP. The evolution and transformation of neighborhoods requires constant monitoring and updating and the Ministry of Social Development had opted for innovation and technology to advance the processes. The Ministry collaborated with the project IDAtlas, led by the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA). In it, they make use of artificial intelligence and space technology to detect informal settlements automatically through satellite images. This collaboration made it possible to include popular neighborhoods not previously detected, which have been visited and verified by RENABAP, and have already been included in the National Registry.
The global-scale project collaborates with seven cities on different continents, including Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Jakarta, Lagos, Medellín, Mumbai and Nairobi, making it adaptable to a variety of very different urban environments. IDAtlas demonstrates how the combination of technology, innovation and community participation can address the mapping of neighborhoods invisible to authorities, but which are home to a large number of citizens. This project has sparked a lot of interest from intergovernmental organizations such as the UN and the OECD, and what began as a scientific initiative has the potential to become a global tool for more inclusive and equitable urbanization.
However, to achieve this, you must have local public support. And it is therefore essential that the new Government maintain the financing and good work of RENABAP to be able to advance the rights of more than five million citizens who until a little over five years ago were forgotten. Argentina is a reference in this and it is time to improve processes, not erase them from the map.
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