Increase of low-income setlements: barriadas or pueblo jovenes (young towns)
Between 1955-1961 the amount of people in Lima living in shantytowns went up from 10-17%.
Barriadas were in efficient way to develop a city: the process was slow and expensive. It also forced families to live in crowded housing for a while. The government did not offer the poor any aid to help them build houses. After 1961, barriadas were free from having to obtain a building license.
Very few families rented housing in Lima, unlike many other Latin American cities.
The new “young towns” have more problems than the established ones, the settlers in the old ones.
As a result of extended urbanization in Lima, the city suffers from air pollution and contaminated water.
The amount of children with respiratory illnesses went up from 400,000 in 1994 to 1 million children in 2005 according to a study done on Limean children in 2005.
Fecal contamination was found in water in urban households in Lima, Peru. 28% of water stored for cooking had fecal contamination. 30% of stored boiled drinking water had E. coli. Boiled water was more likely to be contaminated when poured ina drinking cup than when stored.
In one shantytown, informal businesses used homemade furnaces with oil-drum chimneys to melt down lead from car batteries in order to sell it. The children of this area were tested in 2005 to see the amount of lead in their blood, and 26 out of 27 had levels exceeding the recommended amount. However, these “businesses” cannot be shut down because the people of the town rely in them for income.
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| Shantytown in Lima |
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| Pueblos Jovenes |