Housing networks in San José, Costa Rica

Drawing on institutionalist approaches developed in other fields such as sociology, economics and planning, the author has identified and applied two concepts—housing networks and spaces of negotiation—as tools to analyse relations between state, market and civil society in low-income housing in developing countries. In this paper, the concept of housing networks is used to analyse low-income housing processes in five settlements within a large low-income area in San José, Costa Rica. The analysis of housing networks in these case studies, linked to a political economy analysis of housing in Costa Rica, shows the increasing role of civil society in the housing process in this country, where CBOs are the actors that most often participate in these networks, their input being essential to successful housing delivery.