Social networks in space : understanding the daily behaviour of urban residents in Barrio Mena del Hierro, Quito, Ecuador.

Abstract

The subject of this thesis is the daily patterns of social and spatial behaviour in the barrios of Quito, Ecuador. Latin American barrios are low-income settlements which emerge illegally in the periphery of the cities, without basic infrastructure, and which are built progressively through the self-help efforts of owner-residents. Barrios are in quantitative and qualitative terms the most important phenomenon of Latin American urbanization. Between 25-50% of the residents of the cities live in such settlements. The social organization of barrio residents is rich, complex and distinct from other urban groups such as high-income sectors, which traditionally aspire to a North American or European way of life. Despite the fact that barrio populations have specific patterns of daily, social and spatial behaviour, urban planning by municipal authorities in Latin America has been tailored towards the lifestyle of high-income groups. The city of Quito, a capita of one million inhabitants, is no exception to this pattern. It is evident from the literature and from my own professional experience--as an educator in the barrios and later as a municipal planner--that the prevalent planning orientation towards high-income groups is partly due to a lack of common language between social scientists and planners. It is, however, also due to a lack of knowledge by planners and geographers of how the urban culture of barrio groups works. Much research has been carried out to date in the barrios but it suffers from inadequate understanding of the spatial dimensions of daily social behaviour. The social geography of barrios is indeed poorly known. I argue here that the spatial analysis of daily social interaction is a crucial component in explaining the obvious differences in spatial behaviour between low-income and high-income groups and in communicating this understanding in a practical and tangible form to municipal planners. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to help fill this gap in knowledge through a geographical examination of daily patterns of social and spatial behaviour. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)