Growth and evolution of the favela by Cliff Lesmeister

GROWTH AND EVOLUTION OF THE FAVELA

Has self-construction a future for the creation of a successful neighbourhood in Brazil?

Cliff lesmeister

GROWTH AND EVOLUTION OF THE FAVELA Has self-construction a future for the creation of a successful habitats in Brazil? Cliff Lesmeister

Abstract This paper starts with explaining the self-built favela neighbourhoods in Brazil: a spontaneous and continuous evolving, but coherent way of self constructing living habitats. A strong the internal logic takes shape in these informal neighbourhoods despite the absence of any formal mechanisms of planning. The emergence of informal neighbourhoods is not common in Western Europe. Brazilian cities have often self-built neighborhoods in its peripheries: for instance, in S達o Paulo the informal city arose next to the formal city, and contains 20 percent of the megalopolis' inhabitants (4 million people on a total of 19,8 million) 1. Without trivializing the large social and safety problems in the favela, I explore in this paper the distinctive positive aspects of the favela: user-central (self) building, autonomy due to flexibility. With a surprisingly strong internal logic neighborhood as a result, despite the absence of planning. To make a balance I explore also the positive characteristics of open process and compare them with the disadvantages of open process in the favela. Finally a give my opinion about self-construction and the open process, is it a good system for Brazil for the future?

Amsterdam, December 20th, 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface Chapter 1

THE FAVELA

3 4-6

Most people have an image of the favela, based on famous pictures and movies of Rio's favelas on the steep hills. This chapter explains brief the neighborhood behind this picture, how it emerged and what the typical problems are: it's a foundation for understanding the favela. Chapter 2

GROWTH AND EVOLUTION, AN OPEN PROCESS

6-8

The favela is not based on formal planning parameters: It is not an army of designers, planners and other experts, from both the private as the public sector that create the favela. The favela is created bottom up by the inhabitants, based on an open process of continuous growth and evolution. This chapter subscribes how this works, and why the favela is organized logically, and what the disadvantages are of informal growth. Chapter 3

DRAWING UP THE BALANCE

8-10

With in consideration that enormous growth of informal settlements will not stop: can growth be managed better to prevent the favela against the disadvantages of open process. And can open process of the favela create successful neighborhoods in the future?

Notes

List of Images

Bibliography

13-14

PREFACE

The topic of the paper is based on a fascination for the favela, that arose since I'd visited the favela Heliópolis in São Paulo. I saw here a neighborhood completely selfconstructed with concrete and brick stone houses in different size, width and height, and in different stadiums of the building process. They are all inhibited but, appear virtually all as unfinished. In this favela are several shops, a cinema, a radiostation, bars, street vendors, schools. Many cars are parked around the pavements, and some people have a drive-in car parking on the ground floor of the dwelling. When you walk on the narrow streets you deem to be in a village, with on top of the hill the São Paulo skyline on the background. Many people, young and old, hang around on the streets. One lady showed the interior of their self-built house: it's surprising well decorated with painted walls, tiled floors. The rooms are pretty small, but the house has a bathroom, kitchen, two bedrooms, two balconies a roof terrace and a living room with furniture and a flat screen TV. I never expected this to be a favela. I haven't seen the dark side of the favelas in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Thanks to the good care of the community leaders who guided me through the favela Heliópolis and Santa Marta, I was not confronted with mugging, drugs crime, violence or pickpocketing. Many things changed in the last 5 years. In 2006 Heliópolis was subject of a BBC article where they subscribed Heliópolis as “a vast maze of alleyways and winding streets […] controlled by drug-traffickers and scarred by gun crime, it remains a no-go area for most of this city's residents'' 2. Today, Heliópolis is improved with urbanization projects by the municipality partly financed with investments of non-governmental organisations and the World Bank. 3 The significant improvement of Heliópolis was mentioned many times during several lectures and discussions about Heliópolis on Mackenzie University São Paulo: most people, including the officials from the government and the people from the university where in general positive about the favela Heliópolis 4. Unfortunately is this just one of the few highly improved neighborhoods: there are still unlivable favelas in Brazil. These favelas, are not equipped with adequate infrastructure, devoid of acute precarious situations, and are places where serious crime terrorizes the lives of the citizens. 5 Nevertheless, you cannot compare the favela with the slums built up with cardboard houses in which people in India and Africa live; Many favelas have outgrown this beginning stage. But surely for most people life in the favela is hard. And not as romantic as I subscribed in the beginning of this introduction. The excursions showed me the physical favela, but gave me not the opportunity to understand the social problems. Finally, the mechanisms behind the creation of a favela are fascinating and will be the main focus in this paper. But gradually I started to understand that these driving forces are the same forces that create misery in the some of the favelas: exclusion, hopelessness and poverty.

THE FAVELA

1.1 The formal city versus the informal city By 2030, 60 percent of the world's population will live in urban area's 6, and Brazil is no exception. Latin America is already highly urbanized, and it is the most urbanized region in the developing world: 77% of it's population living in urban area's and and four of the worlds 14 most populated area's are located in Latin America.7

Two of them are the Brazilian mega-cities São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro

and both of them have a high percentage of the population living in slums: 20 percent in São Paulo and 19 percent in Rio de Janeiro. 9 Brazil has the 7th largest economy in the world based on nominal GDP [2.500 trillion]. São Paulo accounts for 15.2 percent of the national GDP, and Rio de Janeiro for 7.4 percent.10 São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have been a job creating machine and are a magnet for many migrants from Europe, Japan, as well from Brazil's poor North-East.11 Many people moved to these mega-cities in the hope to find more wealth and happiness. São Paulo growth enormous from 240.000 people in the early years of the last century to the incredible figure of 19,2 million inhabitants in the whole Metropolitan Area of São Paulo today. Contemporary Brazilian mega-cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro reached the final stage of the urbanisation process. The rapid growth of these cities is not as alarming as from 1950 to 1980.12 Nevertheless they are still growing in the peripheries: favelas are chiefly expanding its territory here. The privileged adventurers migrating to the city can afford a house in the formal city, the underprivileged poor people are less fortunate: they are excluded from formal housing in the rapidly developing city. The last thing they can do is accommodate themselves on squatted undesired land in the city that has been ignored by developers or on squatted empty land in the periphery. Groups of underprivileged people gather together on invade land and try here to provide in their raw basic needs to survive. According to Elisabete França, urban planner at the municipality of São Paulo, are “slums the final representation of urban social inequities: poverty, continuous growth and an excessive social spatial urban segregation”. 13 Favelas are often called 'slum' or 'shantytown', but not all favelas are slums. According to the UN Habitat definition a slum is defined as 'a group of individuals living under the same roof lacking one or more of the following: access to improved water; access to improved sanitation facilities; sufficient living area (thus not overcrowded); structural quality/ durability of dwellings; security of tenure'. 14 Today

1. Space invasion in the favela Heliópolis. Photo by: Juca Martins

some of the favelas require all these standards by efforts of the government to urbanize favelas. Most favela's started as a slum, but due to improvements during the last decades they lost the undesirable status of slum, and are shifting to the status of 'normal' neighborhoods. A better definition for favela is informal neighborhood All favelas are included in the city on an illegal way, and thus no part of of the formal city: favelas are squatter settlements located on either public or private land. The land has been occupied in a spontaneous or organized fashion against the legal owner's will, and with no legal relationship established between the residents and the landowner. 15 Favelas do not emerge as a result of market forces. They are the result of the the failure of public

2. Heli贸polis in earlier times, slum houses constructed with non-durable materials Photo by: Juca Martins

or private parties to provide sufficient housing for the workers at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid. And are often seen as a result of poor population growth management. This is particularly applicable on large cities and mega-cities, which had in history an period of extremely rapid growth and are still expanding. 16 Partly because of the rapid growth it was almost impossible to provide adequate housing, sanitation water supply and other basic needs for so many people migrating to the city. Thereby it seemed to be impossible to stop the enormous flow of people to the city, and most growth of the Brazilian mega-cities is concentrated to the favelas today.17 The favela distinguishes itself from the formal city because their designs do not obey any established urban rules and legislation: favelas are areas with irregular self constructed housing without permits and lacking the amenities of urbanization.

3. Heli贸polis in earlier times, sand roads and a shift to durable houses constructed with cast concrete and hollow bricks Photo by: Juca Martins

Infrastructure like a road system, water and sanitation structure is not planned in advance: it's implemented years after the construction of housing, usually due to urbanization projects of the (local) government.18

Dwellings are using almost

every available empty space; a minimum of streets and alleys is kept open. The result will be a very dense, overcrowded area with narrow streets and a lack of public space. Its houses are individual expressions of it's residents, a patchwork of different shaped houses overtakes you in the favela. Often the exterior of the houses is raw and unfinished. The interior got often more attention of the occupant: rooms' surfaces are finished off and the house is furnished completely. Some houses are also finished with plasters on the exterior, but this all depends from the income of the occupant.

1.2 Typical favela problems Squatter settlements are often built on precarious or risky places disregarded by formal housing. These places are located along railways, riverbanks, straddling streams or climbing steep hillsides. When flash-floods, mudslides or other

4. Heli贸polis today: roads are paved and blocks contain multistorey housing

precarious situations occur in cities, and the majority of victims are favela residents. Often most favelas are located far away from the city center, unlike in Rio de Janeiro, where favelas are also located close to the formal city. Spatial separation caused by living at the periphery makes it hard for the favela residents to include in the city. Large distance from the center, lack of adequete public transport and a low car ownership in the favela are the blames. In recent years, drug gangs and other criminal elements have started to characterize the favelas in S達o Paulo, plaguing the settlements with gang warfare and police raids. Finally a typical favela problem is poverty and lack of opportunities for social mobility. Seventy percent of the households lives on up to three minimum salaries, below the official poverty threshold, and 44 percent of the heads of the household have only a primary school education. For favelados it is difficult to get a job, and thus they are more likely to work in the informal economy. 20 Despite of all healthy economical indicators and strong development inequality remains in Brazil. This is mainly caused due to social exclusion (and stigmatization).

GROWTH AND EVOLUTION, AN OPEN PROCESS

2.1 Main mechanisms of logical organic growth and evolution For the urban poor, building shelter on squatted land is a prime survival mechanism, and the main driving force behind the emerge of a favela. Self construction of a small individual houses is the first step for migrants to establish themselves in the megalopolis. Self-constructed housing is built with the most inexpensive materials: in the beginning with weak insufficient materials that quickly becomes replaced by the more durable cast-in-place concrete and hollow brick. The houses are directly formed by the specific needs of the end user, who is directly involved in the building process. Size of the houses depends from family size and available money; the houses are ever-changing and expands with each generation. The favela doesn't grows from an urban plan or scheme, but out of individual needs: the dimension of time, familial growth and available money (for building materials) shapes the favela. 21 In the illegal, and thus law-less favela, people make building limits in continuous negotiation with it's neighbours. The public space is the result of constant negotiation of favela residents.22 For instance, when a resident needs a new room or a terrace he consults his neighbours where to expand the house, where to place windows and where to built other required spatial elements. The resident is not bounded to zoning laws and that enables a constant negotiation about possible interventions. This will help to ensure that residents have an almost

unlimited possibility to expand their houses. As a result (the older) favelas are very dense built: often a house is accessed via a room of another family, streets are narrow and within the building plots almost every square metre is covered with houses.23 This extreme flexibility caused by negotiation and absence of zoning enables the residents to transform the ground floor facing the street to a workshop or retail space. A lack of education and attainability to formal jobs drive people to start their own business that can be easy realized on the ground floor of their dwelling. The informal economy developed itself above expectations of experts and economists. 24 Franchise retail stores, banks, fast food moved in the favela, and an informal real estate marked arose.25 These ingenious open plan process is driven by self-interest and a fight to survive; residents provide in the basic need to have shelter, they need to attain an income, they need to ensure sufficient space for the whole family etc. The many negotiated islands of self-interest shapes slowly but surely the whole favela neighbourhood in an organic way, finally . 5. An example of the informal market in favela Heliópolis: For sale, a house with 12 rooms and 4 bathrooms 2.2 Disadvantages of open plan process in the favela The open plan process will often result in a very dense, overcrowded area with narrow streets and a lack of public space. For instance, favela Heliópolis, the second largest of São Paulo has a density of 67.000 people/ km226. This is more than 15 times as dense as the AUP (Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan) in Amsterdam New West and almost 2 times as dense as the very dense populated 2 nd arrondissement of Paris27. In contrast to Heliópolis, Paris and the AUP offers squares, courtyards, parks or wide street profiles as public space for the inhabitants. Heliópolis lacks public space, both quantitative as qualitative. Two of the few open spaces are private property of the hospital and a water company and thus walled to prevent space invading28. Unfortunately absence of zoning law results in a lack of public space, despite mutually negotiation of residents. Open plan process is the reason why the interior of the blocks is often crammed with houses. Indeed, because there are almost no limitations here. Paths and houses inside the blocks have poor access to light and fresh air, and houses are sometimes accessed through other dwellings, because the overcrowded space left no other solution to expand a dwelling. The unstoppable desire to expand and to build results in tensions that can express themselves in different ways. Some dwellings become dangerous objects, because the building structure can be overloaded due to too many stacked floors. 29 Lack of open space force residents to built on precarious places, for instance on steep hills and alongside rivers banks. And the extreme dense area offers little opportunities to recreate in the public spaces.

6. Extreme density in the favela: A narrow alley is overbuilt with dwellings inside a housing block of Heliópolis

Open plan process is driven by self-interest, and thus the collective interest may be forgotten readily. Only collective stakes that can be made generated easily with some negotiation, will be realized: for instance remaining space open to create paths for accessing houses. Unfortunately, collective effort and investment, in for instance paved paths, will not take place. The housing and neighbourhood access remain sand roads. This rule counts for al amenities that asks for a collective effort: sanitation, water supply, roads, street lighting, building schools, sports facilities, public transportation to the city, etcetera. In the formal city, these elements are designed together with the housing scheme, the informal city is never able to obtain these amenities without help from outside the favela. Besides that, open plan process doesn't take care to merge a favela into the city. As discussed in the first chapter, the favela remains spatial excluded, because there is no overall scheme to develop a strategical (economical and functional) profile in relation to the city. And because it lacks adequate physical connections to the urban environment and the city centre. At last, in favelas people live on the land illegally, because they don't own the land and often have no agreement with the land owner. Favela residents own their houses, but not the land, so the favelados have no protection against

7. Figure ground of heli贸polis (67.000 people/ km2) adjacent to the formal city (Heli贸polis is black in the picture)

forced evictions.30

MAKING UP THE BALANCE

conclusion: can open process create a successful neighbourhood? Informal settlements on invaded land are able to provide sufficient housing for the excluded urban poor in developing economies, despite the enormous rapid growth of the cities. Where formal planning is not able to provide in a social housing assignment of this unprecedented size. In addition the favela has less constraints for spontaneity than a planned city. And a spatial and functional the favela offers almost unlimited possibilities to its residents. The joint efforts and negotiation to

8. Figure ground of of Paris on the edge of 3rd and 10th arrondissement (30.000 people /km2)

build a favela makes sure that strong social relationships and mutual solidarity takes shape here. Nevertheless, all favelas have been a slum in its early years. That this situation is undesirable needs no further explanation. The large amount of favelas in Brazil arose out of deficiencies due to a laissez-faire approach of the government. Which is a pity because well managed urbanization can be a positive force in reducing poverty, stabilizing population and creating environmental well being. Furthermore, the favela offers an enormous workforce for the booming economy of the city, if managed properly. 9. Figure ground of the AUP, Amsterdam New West(4.000 people /km2)

Much later after the establishment of favelas urbanisation projects are conducted in these neighbourhoods: the favela looses its stamp of slum, because it provides in the basic needs of sanitation, fresh water, durable housing, disappearance of overcrowded living and secured land tenure. However, it should be better to provide in an early stage in these basic needs, to skip the step of misery and degraded living. Wouldn't it be better to release land for development of favelas, where the necessary infrastructure is constructed in advance? And where public spaces and amenities will be developed in collaboration with the residents? Building and further completion of the favela can be left to the self-constructing forces of the residents. The design project named 'Favela 2.0'

, designed by Jasper Smits is an example

that comes close to this ideal. It exploits the advantages of informality (extreme flexibility and spontaneity), and eleminates a number of disadvantages. Lots will be released for housing, and infrastructure is implemented before the dwellings are built. Future residents also receive a construction manual, to ensure that their homes are firmlier and smarter constructed, so they are able to extract more value from self-construction. This project was proposed in Heliópolis, but I think the project would do best in recently established favelas and arising slums around the world. The emergence of an informal economy is largely due to a lack of opportunities to participate in formal employment. The informal economy provides good opportunities for some residents to earn a good living, but given the still high poverty rates is not sufficient to eliminate poverty completely. So attention must be paid to the employment of favela residents in the formal economy, what can be achieved by providing a variety of emancipation opportunities (education) and control of territorial exclusion through better links with the formal city. This can be achieved by the provision of the formal city in the favela, or through connecting the favela with the informal city by the means of affordable transport. Because a majority of favela residents do not own a car. A hopeful trend is that the favelas in Brazil are increasingly labelled as a normal neighbourhood. Elisabete França makes a clear statement on this: "the favela is not a slum, it's a neighborhood" [note needed!]. This statement does much well against the stigmatization of the favela. Favela Residents should be seen as people who can contribute to the cities, and not as a criminal, useless lower class. Killing the stigma, will merge the favela better in the city, and offers then more business opportunities the favela residents. Finally, self-construction in the favela ensures people to provide in many basic needs, and they will also ensure that a district is pretty coherent organized on local scale with a local economy. The enormous commitment of these residents is worth

10. Smart city São Paulo project “Favela 2.0”. Designed by Jasper Smits, Academy of Architecture Amsterdam

exploiting, but in principle the favela residents can not do it all alone. A guideline of the formal city is absolutely necessary to transform the favela into a successful entity. A role of designers, experts and governments to make and test proposals together with residents can make progress. Let's use the best of both worlds (the formal and the informal) in Brazil, but also in cities of other emerging economies!

1 UN Habitat, são paulo, a tale of two cities, page 114

2 News-item BBC, Brazil police in 'shoot-to-kill' claims, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6157778.stm, (visited 12 December 2011), cited from article 3 Item Worldbank website, Brazil: Better and Safer Housing for 2 Million People,

http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?pagePK=64312881&piPK=64302848&theSitePK=40941&Projectid=P122391 (visited 19 december 2011), information about investments in 2011 found on website 4 Leite, Carlos; Padiá, Vanessa, Workshop Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie São Paulo, 16 September – 22 September 2011 5 International Institute For Environment and Development, Brazil’s early urban transition: what can it teach urbanizing countries?, page 1 6 UN Habitat, State of the worlds cities 2008/ 2009: harmonious cities, page 122 7 UN Habitat, State of the worlds cities 2008/ 2009: harmonious cities, page 21 8 International Institute For Environment and Development, Brazil’s early urban transition: what can it teach urbanizing countries?, page 9 UN Habitat, São Paulo, a tale of two cities, page 114 10 http://br.finance.yahoo.com/ Retrieved December 17, 2011 11 Sudjic, Deyan, Fine tuning South American cities, from e-book: South American cities: securing an urban future (collected papers of the South

America Conference), page 3 12 Cities Alliance, Challenges Facing Housing Policy in the City of São Paulo, page 20 13 HABI Superintendência de Habitação Popular, Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo, São Paulo: Projetos de Urbanização de Favelas, São Paulo

Architecture Experiment, cited from page 10 14 UN Habitat, State of the worlds cities 2008/ 2009: harmonious cities, page 129 15 polis 2002, integrating the poor document, page 11 16 UN Habitat, State of the worlds cities 2008/ 2009: harmonious cities, page 107 17 UN Habitat, São Paulo, a tale of two cities, page 129 18 Ibid. 19 HABI Superintendência de Habitação Popular, Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo, São Paulo: Projetos de Urbanização de Favelas, São Paulo

Architecture Experiment, page 10 20 UN Habitat, São Paulo, a tale of two cities, page 129 21 HABI Superintendência de Habitação Popular, Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo, São Paulo: Projetos de Urbanização de Favelas, São Paulo

Architecture Experiment, page 12 22 Baltazar, Ana Paula, Kapp, Silke, Learning from ‘favelas’: the poetics of users’ autonomous production of space and the non-ethics of architectural

interventions, page 3 23 Baltazar, Ana Paula, Kapp, Silke, Learning from ‘favelas’: the poetics of users’ autonomous production of space and the non-ethics of architectural

interventions, page 3-5 balthazare kapp explains how one house grow with continuous negotiation 24 International Labour Organisation, Decent work and the informal economy, international conference, 90th session, International Labour Office

(geneva) 25 HABI Superintendência de Habitação Popular, Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo, São Paulo: Projetos de Urbanização de Favelas, São Paulo

Architecture Experiment, page 12 26 Based on a calculation 1,5 km2 surface from a map and population information from www.wikipedia.org 27 Based on calculations based on area surface/ population information from www.wikipedia.org 28 Based on exploration of the heliópolis map on google earth and a site visit 29 UN Habitat, São Paulo, a tale of two cities, page 111 30 UN Habitat, São Paulo, a tale of two cities, page 144 31 Jasper Smits, Favela 2.0, design proposal: Smart cities project sao paulo Academy of BK Amsterdam, autumn semester 2011

LIST OF IMAGES

1. 2.

Heliópolis during space invasion, www.jucamartins.com, photographer: Juca Martins Heliópolis in earlier times, www.jucamartins.com, photographer: Juca Martins

Heliópolis in earlier times, www.jucamartins.com, photographer: Juca Martins

Heliópolis today (2011), photographer: Cliff Lesmeister

An example of the informal market in favela Heliópolis (2011), photographer: Cliff Lesmeister

Alley overbuilt with houses (2011), photographer: Cliff Lesmeister

Figure ground Heliópolis, drawing by: Cliff Lesmeister

Figure ground Paris, drawing by: Cliff Lesmeister

Figure ground AUP, drawing by: Cliff Lesmeister

10.

Favela 2.0 project, by: Jasper Smits

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Publications Baltazar, Ana Paula, Kapp, Silke, Learning from ‘favelas’: the poetics of users’ autonomous production of space and the non-ethics of architectural interventions Burdett, Ricky, Kaassa, Adam, Governing change: the metropolitan revolution in Latin America, Name periodical?, number, date, page 42-51 Caldeira, Teresa, Worlds set apart,

from e-book: South American cities: securing an urban future (collected

papers of the South America Conference), pp 54 Cities Allicance, Integrating the Poor: Urban Upgrading and Land Tenure Regularisation in the City of São Paulo Fabricius, Daniela, Looking beyond informality, Name periodical?, number, date, page 244-249 Klink, Jeroen, Building urban assets in South America, from e-book: South American cities: securing an urban future (collected papers of the South America Conference), pp 7 Leite, Carlos, Somekh, Nadia, Implementing urban change,

from e-book: South American cities: securing an

urban future (collected papers of the South America Conference), pp 59 Lores, Raul Juste, New urban opportunities,

from e-book: South American cities: securing an urban future

(collected papers of the South America Conference), pp 48 Sassen, Saskia, The specialized differences of global cities,

from e-book: South American cities: securing an

urban future (collected papers of the South America Conference), pp 4 Sudjic, Deyan, Fine tuning South American cities, from e-book: South American cities: securing an urban future (collected papers of the South America Conference), pp 3

Books Brillembourg, Alfredo, Hoffman Brandt, Denise, Klumpner, Hubert, SLUM Lab: Sustainable living urban model (2011)

Cities Alliance, ICLEI, UNEP, Liveable cities: the benefits of urban environmental planning, (Washington 2007) Cities Alliance, Challenges Facing Housing Policy in the City of São Paulo

HABI Superintendência de Habitação Popular, Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo, São Paulo: Projetos de Urbanização de Favelas, São Paulo Architecture Experiment (2010)

International Institute For Environment and Development, Brazil’s early urban transition: what can it teach urbanizing countries?, (August 2010)

UN Habitat, SEADE, São Paulo: a tale of two cities, (Nairobi 2010)

UN Habitat, State of the worlds cities 2008/ 2009: harmonious cities (2008) Prefeitura de São Paulo: Habitaçao, Urbanização de Favelas: A Experiência de São Paulo (2008)

Bosch, John, Meijden, Juliette van der, Nio,Maurice, Nijenhuis, Wim, Vries, Nathalie de, Eating Brazil, (1999)

Internet Maps with figures (crime, violence, income) about São Paulo: http://mapas.nevusp.org/

Discussions and design projects about the favela: http://favelissues.com/

Website about the informal cities worldwide: http://designother90.org/cities/home

Urbaniçao de favelas on website São Paulo municipality: http://www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/cidade/secretarias/habitacao/noticias/?p=21857/

Designing with slums worldwide: http://slumlab.org/

A rich source for publications about slums: http://www.citiesalliance.org

Publications on website municipality São Paulo: http://cidadeinformal.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/?page_id=71

World Bank website with also many publications: http://siteresources.worldbank.org