Municipal housing programmes as hybrid urbanism: The case of Tacna, Peru

Within the framework of Peru's decentralisation process and the transfer of urban development competencies to regional and local governments, since 2003 municipalities have received the mandate to regulate and implement Municipal Housing Programmes (Programas Municipales de Vivienda, known as PROMUVI) aimed at the provision of housing to low-income residents. So far, this policy has not been implemented throughout the country, with some exceptions such as Tacna. In this chapter, using a qualitative methodology, we analyse PROMUVI as a process of creating new urban land in the district of Coronel Gregorio Albarracín Lanchipa in Tacna. PROMUVI exemplifies the hybrid arrangements between the state apparatus, institutional conditions and actors’ capacities to adopt a more malleable approach to applying the rules according to their interests, with corruption and clientelist networks, speculative strategies and socio-spatial inequalities as supplementary factors and side effects.