Housing, urban development and health in Latin America: contrasts, inequalities and challenges

Since the outset of the 20th century, growing urbanization and its contingent waxing populations in Latin America, including Brazil, have come to have alarming effects on the conditions of life, especially in the areas of housing and healthcare for such populations. In this paper, we present data describing and qualifying the process of urbanization and its consequences for Latin American countries and certain Brazilian cities. Arguments are presented about the effects of the urbanization process and the development of low-income human settlements (slums known as favelas and squatting in tenement housing) on health conditions, diseases, and the death rate. The first part of the paper is based on secondary and quantitative data about urbanization, housing, and health in Brazilian and other Latin American cities. Governmental and nongovernmental data are used to structure the problematic landscape of the Latin American region. In the second part of the paper, we focus on a case study of a Brazilian coast city that has registered an intense population growth. This study demonstrates that urban policy (housing, environmental, sanitation, and urban transportation) requires an integration of health and environmental public policy and demonstrates the importance of the role of popular participation in urban public policy-making, and the potential importance of the Bertiioga Healthy City Project from the perspective of a better integration of actions, policies, and programs.