How local, community owned and managed housing co-operatives, can be a vital step towards improving the neighbourhoods, bringing good quality civic infrastructure and making the city genuinely ’slum-free’.

Street vendors in Dharavi

This is the first of a series of articles shedding light on the origin of the unplanned settlements in Caracas, which are home to more than half of the population. These stories have rarely been told. Multiple inhabitants were interviewed and shared their stories of struggles, talked about how they overcome hardships, and organize for improvement and self governance.