Improvised Cities: Architecture, Urbanization, and Innovation in Peru (Culture Politics & the Built Environment)

Praise for Improvised Cities: Architecture, Urbanization, and Innovation in Peru (Culture Politics & the Built Environment)

“Improvised Cities is a model exploration of the social, political, and cultural dimensions of construction. Probing and insightful, Helen Gyger is equally at home discussing vanguard architects or community activists, dogmatic economists or policy entrepreneurs. This essential and sobering book draws powerfully on experiences in Peru to address urban questions and professional enthusiasms now debated worldwide.” —Mark Healey, University of Connecticut
 

“This book is an indispensable resource for studying the problems of rapid urbanization and housing in the later twentieth century. Gyger’s multidisciplinary research—in which midcentury anthropological studies and governmental policies figure prominently—not only offers welcome, new historical perspectives but also informs current efforts to create healthy, safe, and just urban environments.”—Carol McMichael Reese, Tulane University
 

“[Improvised Cities] moves beyond well-rehearsed endorsements of slum upgrading, bringing needed critical perspectives about the technologies and politics of spatial coproduction among civic, public, and third-sector actors.” —Latin American Research Review
 

“An immensely complex and instructive analysis of the politically motivated and socially contested housing proposals in Peru. . . . Helen Gyger’s book . . . belongs undoubtedly to the best and most meticulously researched books in these fields and is a sharp portrait of the North-South relations and their enduring effects of dependency.”—Planning Perspectives
 

“Gyger and the University of Pittsburgh Press should be applauded for producing a beautiful book. . . . Gyger’s detailed interdisciplinary approach is something that will hopefully appear in and inspire more urban histories of Latin America.” —Hispanic American Historical Review
 

“Gyger’s approach to aided self-help—an architectural mode where government authorities provide technical assistance to self-builders—is nuanced, detailed, and attentive.” —Journal of Urban History
 

“An excellent, exciting and timely historical investigation. . . . a brilliant, thorough and exciting study of a crucial moment for low-income housing. The amount and density of sources collected is impressive, the analysis comprehensive, and the resulting text is not only illuminating but also enjoyable and relevant to current practice.” —Journal of Latin American Studies
 

“A welcome addition to the growing scholarship on post-war modernism in Latin America. . . . Improvised Cities is the most comprehensive work on urban housing in Peru. As it moves effortlessly across various scales, Gyger reveals how transnational forces shaped Peru’s mid-century housing programmes in a period rife with political volatility.” —Urban History

"A fantastic addition to a fascinating line of urban studies on public housing in Latin America."
—A Contracorriente