Overview

Salta was one of UNESCO’s original Growing Up in Cities sites in the 1970s, under the national leadership of Dr. Antonio Battro and Eduardo Ellis and the international direction of Kevin Lynch. It is a provincial city in the majestic mountainous landscape near the northern boundary of Argentina. Here the project focused on the small, well-defined community of Las Rosas on the outskirts of the city. In the words of Lynch:

This community is most improbable. It was wasteland at the margin of the city. First, a state penitentiary was built there. The land next to the penitentiary was used as a garbage dump. Then, as public housing authorities will, they chose this site (next to the prison and on top of the garbage) for housing. Wrong by all the rules, but when we talked to the children, we gained the impression that a real community has blossomed there.

from “The Spatial World of the Child,” p. 113

Battro and Ellis found several reasons for the blossoming of Las Rosas. There was space in the hills behind the settlement where the children could cut small bushes, dig, and create their own worlds. A local priest had motivated the community to take self-help initiatives, such as building a swimming pool and organizing an annual 10-day Christmas festival that attracted visitors from all over the city. The children played important roles in the festival’s nativity pageant, and a number of boys helped with the swimming pool construction. People were improving their houses bit by bit, putting up fences, decorating facades, painting, and adding rooms. As a result, children perceived Las Rosas to be a place of hope and progressive improvement.

For further information about the Las Rosas study, see Growing Up in Cities and “The Spatial World of the Child” by Kevin Lynch in Growing Up in Cities - General under the Publications link on the project homepage.