The Housing, Geography, and Mobility of Latin American Urban, Poor: The Prevailing Model and the Case of Quito, Ecuador

John Turner's benchmark model of the Latin American city depicts relationships between urban growth and the intra‐urban mobility, shelter, economic status and location of its low‐income migrants. This conceptual model, described below, requires additional empirical assessment, quantitative specification, and updating to encompass the deep regional recession since 1980. Evidence from a survey of low‐income migrants in Quito in 1989 supports portions of the model. However, Quito does not support the model's other predictions about the geography of shanties, houses, and migrants based on length of residence and employment patterns. The poor scramble for work and shelter wherever they may be found. Quito's enforcement of policies against land invasions confines a relatively large portion of the poor to rented rooms. We conclude that the model underconceptualizes and overstates relationships between a Latin American city's phase of urbanization and the length of residence, location, shelter, and work of its low‐income migrants. Rather than abandoning the model, however, we recommend that research use it as a point of departure for investigating the additional contributions of local development and policy.