Management technology and popular urbanization: local networks as support public policies

Abstract

The problem of water availability in popular neighborhoods is part of a broader issue of the struggles for urbanization in contexts of poverty in Latin America. This experience of research and development in two blocks of the Fray Luis Beltrán (Las Dalias) neighborhood in the city of Mar del Plata is an eloquent testimony of collaborative and cross-sectional management with an active participation of the neighbors to solve the problem. Within the framework of “social technology”, this article is a contribution to some questions and theoretical issues to the field of technology in collaborative processes of “popular urbanization.”  This case is of special interest for three reasons: as an emergent of the activism of popular groups, outside of state and market mechanisms; as the display of a series of social strategies of survival that show the possible interstices of the system (both institutional and non-institutional), in order to get resources to an essential material support for habitation and life; and, finally, as the promotion of another role for the university researcher in contexts of highly critical health and humanitarian situations, as a way of raising a case and proposing a solution.