Abstract

Several decades have passed since the installation of the Chilean Model of Public Policy, but the promise of ‘the end of slums’ is still yet to be fulfilled. Despite the government’s claimed intentions, informal settlements have persisted and have even expanded since the ‘90s. A recent ethnographic study has exposed the formation and urbanization of Chile’s largest slum: Manuel Bustos, Viña del Mar. The community is founded on prin-ciples of collaboration and the empowerment of social leadership, both of which have enabled a breakaway from the top-down logic of national housing policies. Instead, the Manuel Bustos community has implemented an independent model of participatory planning that produces and maintains habitat formation. Broad social participation has allowed the community to position their demands on the public agenda, resulting in the specification of urbanization. This process is a response not only to the requirement of the right to adequate housing, but also to the right to the adequate services that cities provide. In their own right, residents of Manuel Bustos have transformed their status from insurgent citizenships formed in the slum, into competent urban planners of an inde-pendently founded city.