Self-help housing and informal homesteading in peri-urban America: Settlement identification using digital imagery and GIS

This paper develops a methodology for integrating remote sensing/aerial photographs and GIS techniques to identify low-income informal homestead subdivisions (IFHS, also known as colonias) in peri-urban areas of US metropolitan areas. Unlike their self-build counterparts in Latin American cities which start as illegal occupations of totally un-serviced lots, in the USA housing production is largely self-managed (embracing trailer homes, manufactured homes, modular units with self-help home improvement, etc.), placed on legally developed lots, albeit poorly or minimally serviced. As researchers begin to understand the logic and rationale underpinning their existence, and better appreciate where (spatially), and what (physical) “footprints” to look for, it becomes possible to identify and quantify the full extent of these peri-urban settlement phenomena. This paper reports on a three Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the USA to demonstrate the methodology and argues that this has wider application both in the USA and elsewhere. Specifically for the US, the paper outlines some of the policy implications that arise from using integrated techniques to develop an inventory of IFHS and from a deepening of public recognition of the phenomenon.