1950
3,3–148,5
400
20
400
200
10
200
São Paulo 1900
1950
1900
2000
1950
20
1950
20
6,1–54,6
19.92 M L N P E O P L E . 31730 H A
40
800
40
30
600
30
20
400
20
10
200
10
2000
1900
1950
2000
2,7–317,3
117,5
PAR
800
40
800
600
30
600
400
20
200
10
2,7–317,3
400
200
2,5–134,7 1900
1950
2000
1900
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51 км 2
0 Administrative City Border City Center Area Territory marked on tourist city maps Urbanized Area of the City
0
2,5
5
10
Upgrading the Favelas Elisabete França
What is the "Informal City"? The 21st-century city undergoes rapid change, resulting in the constant replacement of existing territories as well as territories that have grown in an informal manner, with no regard for the regulations of land usage and occupation. At the beginning of the 20th century, Brazil had an urban population of 6 million, which became around 160 million people just a hundred years later. Integrating a population of this magnitude clearly demonstrates the affinities Brazilians have to urban life. There were no blueprints to be followed for the new urban reality imposed. Lessons learned from the traditional urban discipline were not only out of place, they also could not respond adequately to these challenges. Today, the contemporary urban space project presupposes an understanding of society, with a view to overcoming the ideological barriers that influenced the rationalistic urbanism constructed from the 1920s onwards. The "informal city" is an integral urban phenomenon set up within the city’s territory, a key element of urban morphology that shapes the city’s design. Nowadays it is no longer possible to accept any concept of the "informal city" centred on negative parameters, sustained around ideas of absence, deficiency and homogeneity. Nor can we adopt as significant that which the informal city is not, as compared with an idealized model of the city. Projects for outlying regions characterized by every kind of precariousness need re-definitions based on their own newer relations of space, time and distance; factors responding to both disruption and order. These then offer possibilities for the coming decades to help build a less unequal city, a city where opportunities can be shared more fully by its citizens. The question of sustainability in cities, so much focused on today, needs to reflect and challenge the city to formulate ‘place’, and to organize the places for social exchange and interaction. The city of the future is obviously opposed to the city of ghettos, the city of isolation, the city of closed condominiums, the city where we only exist with those of like-mind. In this sense, in this clash of perspectives, perhaps the example of urban projects in favelas is one of the most powerful instruments for helping us in our reflections. It is precisely the favela, which has a morphology of its own (or several morphologies) and, once accepted as an integral part of the city with its own mechanisms and updated
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infra-structures, may become part of a larger urban whole where variety, diversity and exchange constitute everyday life. We must oppose the dominant mindset in which the favela is construed as a focus of problems, an “undesirable neighbourhood”. The urbanization of the favela is a solution that will allow permanence in the locale, as well as the possibility of future investments in homes. São Paulo has about 1,500 favelas (slums), 1,000 irregular settlements and 2,000 cortiços (slum tenements). This whole conglomeration occupies only 136 km 2 in a city whose territory is 1,500 km2. That is, 30% of the city's population occupy, densely and vertically, less than 10% of the territory of São Paulo. In other words, around 3 million people live in conditions of some degree of urban precariousness – that is, in areas designated as favelas, slum tenements or irregular settlements. However, the new approach to the "informal city" was adopted by São Paulo Municipality and has provided a theoretical basis for future development: the city is working robustly to leapfrog into the formal city. By providing access, by connecting these districts to the city’s infrastructure and by creating job opportunities, the informal city becomes more resilient, economically viable and ecologically sustainable. This is the main objective of this Municipal Housing Policy. In short, there is a need to make the informal city even more crisis-proof than the formal city. This privileged role that the city has adopted – a space for democratic communal living – relates to the extension of access to opportunities for all its inhabitants.
Slums and Slum Upgrading in São Paulo In São Paulo, urbanization has been part of the housing policy’s agenda since the beginning of the 1980s, but only through isolated projects, while the number of slums and squatter settlements increased significantly. By the end of the 1980s, the São Paulo State Government, with the support of the Municipal Government, applied for a World Bank loan to tackle the environmental degradation of Guarapiranga's water basin — a total of 160,000 acres in seven municipalities, including São Paulo itself, where 450,000 people lived at the start of the program. One of the main components of Guarapiranga's environmental program was the upgrading of slums and other precarious settlements located in the basin - a total of 27,000 families, 90% of which were living within São Paulo's municipal boundaries. Regarded as the first large-scale, slum upgrading program in the city of São Paulo, the Guarapiranga Program served almost one hundred slums and became an important example to be followed. The housing problem in São Paulo has been a challenge for decades. The city alone has almost 11 million inhabitants and 3 million live in precarious conditions. To face this huge challenge, the Municipality of São Paulo
through the Municipal Housing Secretariat started one of Brazil's largest slum upgrading programs in 2005 with the understanding that such a program can alleviate poverty significantly as noted above. The program seeks to provide a better quality of life for those living in unsuitable areas and in slums across the city by basically overcoming a series of deficits relating to infrastructure, accessibility, availability of social amenities and public services, in addition to the construction of new decent housing units. São Paulo's slum upgrading program can be regarded as a response to the 1988 Federal Constitution and the 2001 Statute of the City which consolidated all citizens’ right to the city and to decent housing, the social function of property, and the promotion of an equitable and just city through urban development. Public expenditure directed toward slum-upgrading makes clear the Municipality desire to reverse the high level of social exclusion and promote an inclusive process of sustainable urban growth. Precarious housing — favelas or squatter settlements, slums, irregular subdivisions and tenement houses — have been part of the urban landscape for a very long time. These are the only options available for families making less than three minimum-wage jobs per month — a sizeable segment of the population, since their purchasing power is almost never compatible with the formal housing market. The high price of development is mainly due to the lack of land at compatible prices or in a good location in the city. Many simply cannot afford a dwelling unit nor any plot with proper infrastructure in order to build incrementally through a self-help process. Lacking access to the formal housing market, the poor are left with no other alternative than to squat on public land: the margins of rivers and railroad rights of way; land of low commercial value that is usually disregarded by the formal development sector; areas subject to environmental risks such as flood zones or mud slides, contaminated soils, and landfills; sites that are vacant subject to judicial battles; lots with no heirs, or those belonging to religious orders. Informal settlements are also a source of a great number of health problems. The slums of São Paulo are an urban phenomenon that must be considered as a real part of the city structure, one of its morphological elements, which define the urban design. Although informal, they have two main characteristics when compared to the "legal" city. Firstly, their designs do not obey any established urban rules and legislation; the road system is not defined previously or linked to the housing construction, and the water and sanitation infrastructure are implemented after occupation by the dwellers. Secondly, the housing units are built according to the available empty spaces. This process of occupation is known, in general, as “un-allowed occupation”, either on public or private land. As a result of these two characteristics, the slum with its high complexity, scale and diversity has suffered from negative pre-conceptions. Lack, privation and homogeneity have led to serious misunderstandings when comparing the slum with the ideal, classic and traditional pattern of a desired city. Facing this reality, any design or upgrading proposals to improve these degraded areas, themselves suffering from high indexes of social and health vulnerability, must still take into consideration the fact that these settlements are located within the real city. It must be understood that each slum was built as an answer to the social exclusion process and spatial segregation. At the same time it offers its inhabitants clear self-protection
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alternatives when faced with huge metropolitan growth. Formerly seen as a reflex and mirror of an uneven society, the recognized "real" slum’s social diversity appears nowadays a key to wider urban problems and solutions. Slum upgrading is regarded as an important component of the strategies to fight poverty; investments in basic infrastructure and services contribute significantly toward reducing the inequalities faced by the families living in these informal settlements. The main purpose of slum upgrading is to overcome shortages of infrastructure, accessibility, and the availability of social facilities and public services, as well as the provision of new suitable housing for families whose homes are affected by the public works. The main goal is to respect the existing community and to keep the majority of the families in their locales, assuring the continuity of the investments they have made in building their homes over time. A second goal is the qualification of public space, not only to increase its qualities as social and recreational public spaces, but also as important elements that can promote the physical integration of the community to the neighbouring areas and promote their recognition as part of the formal city. Thus, besides solving problems such as sanitation, drainage, accessibility, land stability and environmental risk factors, these projects face the challenge of providing quality, well-equipped public spaces, increasing the potential for promoting social encounters and public life. In addition, projects must deal with formidable soil and topographic conditions, local existing urban and architectural morphologies, and the ‘availability’ of land in order to generate a well-articulated final environment. The goal is an environment where all residents have access to this basic infrastructure and public spaces, services, and facilities allowing people to exercise neighbourliness and reach fuller citizenship. Considering that slums are determined by historical, morphological, social and structural conditions (flood zones, hill sides, river banks, railroad right-of-ways, etc.) upgrading projects must be specific to each situation and necessarily different from each other. In addition, projects need to be widely discussed with the residents; cultural diversity is of course also a relevant factor in defining architectural solutions. In slum upgrading, a paved road system is designed to allow vehicular access for public services (ambulances, police, mail, waste collection) as well as for the installation of drinking water, sewage, and drainage systems. Dwellings in environmental areas such as flood zones and steep hillsides are relocated, fragile slopes subject to landslides are contained, and streams are protected or canalized. Public equipment, spaces for parks, leisure and recreation are defined as community centres, and guarantee the full development of activities that strengthen community relations. Taking the city itself as a source of solution, slum upgrading is mainly aimed at building quality public spaces that respect environmental and cultural pre-existences and above all, dilute and blur the urban and symbolic frontiers between the formal city and its informally developed and marginalized areas.
São Paulo's Municipal Housing Plan (2009—2024) São Paulo’s housing policy complies with the city’s 2002 Strategic Master Plan that ratifies the Federal Constitution and recognizes the right to suitable housing as a social right. For the Strategic Master Plan, suitable housing is that which not only guarantees the resident’s safety within it, but also “provides adequate sanitary facilities, guarantees the conditions of habitability met by essential public services, among them: water, sewage, electric power, public lighting, waste collection, pavements and public transport, with access to basic social equipment.” As a signatory of the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations, São Paulo seeks to attain a series of objectives established therein by the year 2020, especially in regards to increasing the number of families that have access to drinking water and other basic infrastructural needs, and to improving the general quality of life of families living in slums. The challenge is that the construction of the city must be based on the understanding and management of differences, in the move toward social inclusion and the pro-active involvement of the communities in institutions at all government levels and civil society. This is how a democratic city should be constructed. Based on the principles discussed above, São Paulo’s city administration defined its housing policy whereby 130,000 families have benefited with works in progress or projects already concluded, where the final phase provides families with a deed to their land, granting a special-use concession for living purposes. These slums became new neighbourhoods added to the city and families have obtained an important part of their citizenship. Besides the upgrading (or "urbanization" in Portuguese), this includes building an infrastructure that will raise the health standard, with 10,000 housing units being built in order to replace dwellings located in risk areas. Among ongoing works and works contracted from 2005 to 2012, investments by the Program totalled US$3 billion. In order to continue this set of actions, funds from the municipal budget for housing were increased, complemented by funds from the State and Federal governments. In 2006, São Paulo's Municipal Social Housing Secretary created the Habisp – Sistema de Informações para Habitação Social, a municipal information system for social housing. The system's web interface is designed to facilitate the interaction between city residents and the government regarding public housing, and to make governmental plans and decisions transparent. It provides all sorts of online information on the city's housing policies, programs, plans, design guidelines, news and publications, plus an interface between a geographic information system and the different variables on public housing. Gradually São Paulo's city government has begun reassessing its priorities, focusing on real housing problems and responding to the demands of communities that are better organized. Today it is possible to say that São Paulo's municipal housing policy is a source of pride for those who worked on it. Above all, it is a legacy that should be seen as a best practice in public policy.
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Slum upgrading is aimed at creating quality public spaces that respect environmental and cultural preexistences and blur the urban and symbolic frontiers between the formal and informal areas
Cantinho do CeuPark before renovation
Cantinho do CeuPark — after renovation (Boldarini & partners)