Understanding the impacts of the produced public space in women’s housing acceptability within consolidating informal settlements

Housing is more than houses, contemporary approaches advocate for an integral concept of adequate housing, turning outside of domestic boundaries and physical qualities; and into the financial, social and environmental opportunities the housing sector provides. This study focuses on how physical and social housing acceptability are attained through the adequate production of effective environments in the form of public spaces in vulnerable settings, such as consolidating informal settlements. Public spaces provide the field where human interactions happen in urban contexts and knowledge about their benefits and the opportunities they provide for urban residents is constantly increasing. Nevertheless, most of the literature around this is centered in conventional urban settings, even when trying to address the developing world where informality is largely involved in the functioning of cities and human settlements. This generates a gap between the statutory understanding of public spaces and its proper implementation and effectiveness in informal contexts. The study utilizes the spatial production theory to approach the term of public spaces, which advocates that space is constructed individually based on associations of experiences, perceptions and repeated use. It provides the definition of ‘potential environments’ and ‘effective environments’ for publicness to thrive and deliver the benefits of actively participating in public life. Different groups perceive and utilize available spaces differently, stablishing social relations, boundaries or conflicts that shape different demographics roles in space, and thus, the production of space is different between demographics. In informal contexts, women are among the most vulnerable groups, due to unequal domestic labor and responsibility distribution and reduced mobility. Additionally, gender and space share a socio-cultural construction process based on expectative, roles and repeated use that is worth exploring to understand how they can be harnessed to achieve spatial and gender justice. Through qualitative methods, this research analyzes how consolidation efforts are implemented in neighborhoods of informal origin, which kind of perceptions these offer to women and how these ultimately impact their use and establishment as effective environments. Then, the study identifies common patterns resulting from the women’s process of spatial production and will discuss their impacts on physical and social housing acceptability. Finally, it will conclude with the answer to how the production of public spaces impact women’s physical and social housing acceptability in consolidating informal settlements, point at general findings relevant to improving housing acceptability from gender perspective and recommend relevant research to conduct to build upon the concepts discussed within this study.