A Dominican academic study documents the most ambitious social housing program implemented by a government in the 20th century in Santo Domingo: four-story multi-family buildings, middle-class housing developments, and mixed-use complexes that changed the city's skyline
SANTO DOMINGO. – During his twelve years of uninterrupted government, between 1966 and 1978, Dr. Joaquín Balaguer promoted at least 31 housing projects identified in Santo Domingo, including urbanizations for the middle class, multi-family complexes of social interest and mixed developments with commercial, office and residential use.
This is documented by the architect Evelyn Vanessa González Mueses in her master's thesis On Dominican social housing in the 20th century: The case of Santo Domingo.
According to the author, the program was unprecedented in the country's history. The government prioritized the construction as a key investment area in its economic policy and implemented public works projects that included social housing, government buildings, and cultural, health, and sports facilities.
It was also the era in which modern Dominican architecture was born and the first large-scale public housing projects emerged.
The projects
González Mueses classifies housing production during the period into two main categories: projects in degraded areas, formally oriented towards low-income sectors, and urbanizations for the middle class promoted with the support of the financial system created since the beginning of the sixties.
In the first category, the author identifies as priorities the housing complexes mentioned in a previous report, such as Matahambre, Guachupita, Plaza Trinitaria, Honduras (also called General Antonio Duvergé), Barrio Simónico, Anacaona, Los Tres Brazos, 27 de Febrero, Félix María Ruiz, the Shell CONALCO complex (1970), and the residential complex adjacent to the Hotel El Embajador (1976), made up of several apartment towers. These complexes were predominantly built as four-story multi-family blocks.
In the second category, the text records the urbanizations Los Jardines, El Millón (or Los Millones), Los Maestros in Mirador Norte, Los Ríos, Las Caobas, Alma Rosa, Villa Carmen, Las Palmas de Herrera, Mirador Sur, Villa Duarte, Los Jardines del Sur, Costa Brava, Cacique, Coplan, Miramar, Ensanche Naco, Piantini, Evaristo Morales, Julieta, Fernández and Arroyo Hondo.
Typology and design
The architect Erwin Cott, cited in the thesis, described Balaguer's multi-family buildings as four-story buildings constructed with a completely new vision compared to what had been done up to that point in the Dominican Republic.
The architect Rafael Tomás Hernández and the engineer José Miguel Mondesí were responsible for designing them, introducing, according to the author, a new typology within the urban fabric.
González Mueses' research, supported by plans drawn up by the architect Natalia Ulloa Cáceres, specifies the characteristics of the housing units in some of these complexes.
The Honduras project (General Antonio Duvergé), a typological reference since 1966, had units of 78 square meters, organized in a cross plan with four dwellings per level and three heights; the total area per block reached 1,330 square meters and the density was 63 dwellings per hectare.
Las Palmas de Herrera and Mirador Sur have units of 60 and 155 square meters respectively. Villa Duarte, also from 1966, has units of 72 square meters. Los Jardines del Sur, also from that year, reached 110 square meters. Las Caobas, documented around 1977-1978 within the same period, has units of 60 square meters.
The mixed-use building on 27 de Febrero Avenue represented a more complex model: five stories with shops on the first floor, offices on the second, and apartments on the third, fourth, and fifth. According to the Joaquín Balaguer Foundation, cited in the thesis, this building became a model for urban development projects of the period.
From the mid-seventies onwards, new multi-family typologies emerged, such as the apartment buildings around the Hotel El Embajador in 1976, as recorded by Ulloa Cáceres in another investigation cited by the author.
Territorial logic
La Fuente neighborhood, at the western end of the Duarte Bridge. Source: Housing and Urban Renewal in the Dominican Republic.
González Mueses describes the guiding urban planning principle of the program: the typology of each project was determined by its location in the urban fabric.
In the most central and densely populated areas, multi-level multi-family blocks predominated; as the projects moved towards the periphery, the height decreased until they became single-family homes or one-level duplexes.
In general, they were new urbanizations that were connected to form the urban network that is today Santo Domingo.
The government also carried out interventions in specific marginalized areas: Loma de Chivo, at the entrance to the Duarte Bridge; Francisco del Rosario Sánchez Avenue; Los Tres Brazos; and Katanga. To implement some of these projects, as the author documents with sources from the time, the government evicted a number of families who were resettled in Los Alcarrizos, a community that began to grow rapidly following this forced relocation.
Private investment, channeled through the financial systems created since the early 1960s, accompanied the state program. Decisions regarding the location of this investment were in the hands of financial institutions, which concentrated credit among the middle and upper classes and exacerbated social segregation in the city, as the author points out, citing Llamazares, Mejía Ricart, and Delgado (1990).
A school, but with a political bias
González Mueses offers a double-edged historical assessment. Balaguer's housing projects were, in words circulating in the sector, both a guide and a model: the first multi-family buildings steered the private sector towards that type of three- or four-story construction.
On the other hand, the author documents a structural critique of the program: given that there were not enough skilled workers during that period, the apartments were predominantly given to people with political connections.
Social housing did not necessarily reach vulnerable sectors, but was used as political perks at a particular time, in the words of architect Cott collected in the research.
The source
González Mueses's work is an academic master's thesis, not an official catalog of works. The author draws on specialized secondary sources, including the book Joaquín Balaguer: The Statesman of Construction and Urban Planning (Joaquín Balaguer Foundation, 2008), the book Housing and Urban Renewal in the Dominican Republic, and Diana María Germán's thesis, The Housing Policy of the State during the Balaguer Period (1966-1978).
The data on the area and typology of the housing units comes from the plans drawn up by architect Natalia Ulloa Cáceres, incorporated by González Mueses as reference material. The text does not, in most cases, record the total number of units built per project or the construction costs.
Series: History of social housing in the Dominican Republic. (Chapter X).
Recommended readings:
