Socio-spatial diversity as a strategy for metropolitan lima's urban sustainment, 2007

This paper studies the composition of Lima's population in terms of social diversity as a source of equilibrium for urban systems. The study is gleaned from the sustainable development related to both economic development and the quality of the improvement of human conditions. Territories like Lima and Callao, which since the early 1920s had informal urbanization as their main pattern of expansion, have areas characterized by deep physical, social, and economic inequalities. Consequently, these areas are mutually exclusive in their habitability and functionality. This scenario of urban un-sustainability, more evident in the periphery, is being confronted with a recent re-composition of population groups, both homogeneous and heterogeneous. The degrees of diversity, inequality, and territorial location present in these groups are presenting areas of integration and connectivity between neighbourhoods that were considered poor and segregated. Within the frame of reference of sustainable urban development as a unifying systemic process, such spaces represent an opportunity for urban intervention in order to coordinate activities and urban services which, in turn, can balance the differences between habitability and functionality as a strategy for a more sustainable city.