The slums keep growing in Greater Santo Domingo

[Dolores]

Experts on urban studies are amazed at how quickly urban areas become fetid slum areas while authorities seem to just watch. There are areas that one sees from the bridges across the Isabela and Ozama rivers or from some of the major thoroughfares. They are often nestled up against areas considered high-cost and up-scale. Others are historically present since the mid-1950s, despite the efforts of the Trujillo dictatorship to stem urban blight. Places such as Gualey, Domingo Savio, Los Guandules are well known to social workers, religious groups and governments. The unhealthy conditions, crowding and lack of basic public services seem to call out for solutions, but these seem to be slow in coming.

Comments gathered by reporters from the El Caribe newspaper show that generations of family members have grown up in these areas, working at anything that will pay enough to...

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[NALs]

It should be noted that about 80% of Santo Domingo was built in the 1970's and after, and it was in that decade and in the 1980's that it became one of the world's leading city in receiving migrants from the countryside. Moving around the country at the time of Trujillo wasn't so easy.

 

[Naked_Snake]

It should be noted that about 80% of Santo Domingo was built in the 1970's and after, and it was in that decade and in the 1980's that it became one of the world's leading city in receiving migrants from the countryside. Moving around the country at the time of Trujillo wasn't so easy.

If the trend isn't stopped (or at least slowed down considerably) it will be next to impossible to drive around in this city. Jams start at exactly 7:00AM, only to end at late hours in the night, and it usually takes a couple of hours or more to make a route than in a saner reality would take only half an hour or 15 minutes.

 

[NALs]

Going back to how it was when Trujillo ruled things is basically impossible. Back then a person needed permission to go from one town to another. There were military checkpoints between the towns and they would stop people asking for documented proof for why they left their town. That was simply going from one place to another, imagine moving. People were deported back to their town or campo because they didn't have a sort of visa that would allow them to live in another town or in Ciudad Trujillo/Santo Domingo. It wasn't like today where you simply get up and go wherever you want, whenever and basically however.

Traveling outside the country implied that you had to applied for a passport, there was an interview regarding why you wanted to leave the DR even on a short trip more so than why you wanted to go to a particular country, and if you were granted a passport you were obligated to turn it in to the government once return. Every time you had to travel outside the country (which wasn't common) you needed to go through that process.

I think the people would revolt if the government puts that much restriction on their movements. That and/or take away the alcohol and that government is guaranteed to be topled soon. They might go to war if they have to. lol

 

[LTDan]

slums growing in Santo Domingo; what a shocker?, who would've thought