The popular housing in the city of San Salvador: bases for its historiographical understanding

Abstract

The present article aims to draw an analytic historical line, about the urban development of San Salvador, El Salvador. This approximation it is set, as basis to the comprehension of popular housing development in two periods of time, ex ante and ex post of president Osorio´s regime that started on 1950. Methodologically we used as text, the San Salvador´s evolution of its urban grid, in different development phases in the light of the historical conditions, in an open dialog between causes and conditions. The time line set, respond firstly, to an effort to situate the urban development of San Salvador, in the big frame of the urban history of Latin-America in this period; and secondly, because the military regimens started an urban development phase, that breaks down the traditional morphology of the city from the spatial form, that became in the actual fragmented city. The institutionalization and technification of housing production started in 1950 in San Salvador, is a period of time that has to be studied in deep, to expose and debate, the contemporary socio-spatial fragmentation of the city; historical statement from which, we have to begin to propose new architectural and urban solutions, in the aim to construct the just city.

AKADEMOS, Year 9, Vol. 2, No 25, July-December 2015: 67-88