Lima's time bomb: how mudslides threaten the world's great 'self-built' city

By Dan Collyns

By many reckonings, Lima is one of the world’s greatest “self-built” cities. Most people here still build their own homes, pouring the concrete themselves. In fact, more cement is sold on the domestic market than in the commercial one.

But those homes are all too often built in vulnerable locations, sold by unscrupulous land dealers who misrepresent safety claims. As a result, when heavy rains hit the city, hundreds of thousands of homes were simply washed away.

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Location also has a major role to play. “In Lima almost all the flood damage was caused by the illegal occupation of land,” says Alvaro Espinoza, an urban development investigator with thinktank Grade.

“The landslides happen every year. The problem isn’t the buildings, but that they are built on riverbeds – and people continue to live there even when they have seen what happens.”

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Throughout the country, funds earmarked for disaster prevention were not used. In Lima, just a fraction of the budget for 2017 had been spent on actually preventing disaster. Instead, most of it was used to improve Lima’s seafront, despite widespread public disapproval.