{"content":[{"text":"Alex Park – Has This Chilean \n Architect Figured Out How To Fix \n Slums?","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.056675,"width":0.857015,"height":0.131319}},{"text":"m.motherjones.com. June 2014. In the United States, we \n tend to think of the suburbs as the historic domain of \n the middle class. It’s where the boomers went after \n fleeing the cities to accommodate their growing families \n (although the demographics of the suburbs are now \n changing). \n But in Latin America, urban peripheries are less \n commonly populated by leafy suburbs for the rich than \n by slums for the poor. These shantytowns typically lack \n basic infrastructure like paved roads, sewers, and tap \n water. Living far from the city, residents are often \n forced to make long and expensive commutes. \n But in the medium-sized Chilean port city of Iquique, one architect, Alejandro \n Aravena, had a solution: partial houses, located at the center of town, equipped \n with only the barest necessities—and space for residents to build on, bit by bit, as \n they can afford it.","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.210531,"width":0.857128,"height":0.37946099999999994}},{"text":"When they were first built fourteen years ago for about 100 families, Aravena’s \n flagship projects, called the Quinta Monroy Houses, came with all the core \n necessities—a roof, a bathroom, a kitchen. With a little more than 300 square feet \n in floor space to start with, the houses were 25 percent smaller than the average \n public housing unit in Chile, but with an extra-wide foundation, residents had \n plenty of room to expand.","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.611415,"width":0.857167,"height":0.13893099999999992}},{"text":"In his new book, Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New \n Architecture, journalist Justin McGuirk writes that when Aravena first launched \n the project through his firm, Elemental, a number of critics were appalled. They \n argued that the government should provide complete houses, since incomplete \n houses require the occupant to perform manual labor. But where some saw a \n failure in the making, others welcomed change. In the 1970’s, under Chile’s \n socialist president Salvador Allende, the government prioritized building","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.771768,"width":0.857117,"height":0.1629839999999999}}],"images_bbox":[{"left":0.071429,"top":0.214077,"width":0.238123,"height":0.267256}],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[{"left":0.071429,"top":0.214077,"width":0.238123,"height":0.267256}]}