John F. C. Turner and the debate on popular participation in the production of habitat in Latin America in the architectural-urban culture, 1961-1976

Abstract

The first United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Habitat I, held in Vancouver in 1976, is widely considered as the moment in which the question of popular participation in the production of habitat became mainstream. For at least the following ten years after the U.N. Conference in Vancouver, “aided-self-help” programs and in general the ideas associated with the British architect John F.C. Turner became the official policy and theoretical framework of the main multilateral organizations, such as the World Bank. The purpose of this article is to review the period that goes from the launching of the US program Alliance for Progress (1961) and Habitat I (1976)—and in particular, to examine the development of Turner’s thought in this cycle—to account for the construction of this consensus and its incorporation into architectural and urbanistic culture.