Jaime Hernández García

This paper explores the relationships that are held in urban poor areas between architecture and urban development with the people who live in those areas. This research intends to explore, identify and analyze what kind of architecture and urban space is produced when people themselves, using their own initiative, develop their own environments; the above explained placed in my home country, Colombia. The article analyzes how residents produce and express their settings by means of local initiative and community participation processes, and suggest that these projects can be better than those produced by public or private plans in low income settlements. It also recommends the need to learn from this community production in order to enrich the formal practice of architecture and the development of public policies.