Planning and management of Madrid's guided settlements: an innovative social response to the housing problem

The guided settlements for limited incomes in Madrid (1956-1959) are a field of experimentation in post-war urban models of social housing, contributing to eradicate slums on the outskirts of Madrid and incorporate "self-building" as a differentiating ingredient. This article highlights management problems and difficulties of planning, deadlines and budgets that come to light from unpublished documents found in the archives, such as reports and memories of the original projects. Social urgency and the speed with which the projects were drawn up are the main causes. Based on the graphic reworking of the original projects, a comparative critical analysis is made of the seven settlements that shows, more than half a century after their construction, the validity of the research and urban and typological innovation involved in this significant and unique experience in twentieth-century social housing.