Alex Melchiore

11/3/2016
Dr. Tait Chirenje
Favelas and Urban Planning
Brazil has had a tough go at maintaining a stable government and balance through the
attempts of urban planning. Outside the government however much of Brazil was still poor. For
example, Alto do Cruzeiro was very low on the social class. This area of Brazil was home to
about 5,000 citizens whose main source of income came from farming and harvesting. This area
was so poor that over thirty-three percent of its citizens lived in straw huts, their only access to
water lied on top of a hill from a public stand pipe. Malnutrition was very common, infant
mortality rates were as high as 200 out of 1,000 births, and many of the citizens were illiterate.
Over twenty-five years have passed and there were major changes: most of the huts had been
transformed into small brick houses and the health services drastically improved (but still were
average at best). However, people were still starving. Thousands of people remained in deep
poverty and still do to this day especially in the favelas which seem to be severely overlooked
when it comes to urban planning and improvements (Reid 164-166).
Brazils rural north-east has the highest levels of poverty within the country. As
previously stated, most of the factors that allow the area to remain poor are a lack of
infrastructure, lack of education, frequent droughts, and political corruption along with unequal
landholding. Naturally the government has had many attempts to pull the area out of poverty.
Democracy started to take hold and the economy of the entire region began to grow, the
household incomes rose by over 72.8 percent. This initial growth had also done wonders by
attracting many investors to pour more cash into this area, essentially saving it although there
were still improvements to be made. So much had changed for the consumer market that many

businesses started to arise such as shoe manufacturers, car manufacturers, textile factories, and
many other businesses had saw this as a place of opportunity. Even with all this improvement,
the average GDP for the region was still far below the national average (Reid 166-167). With all
of these improvements, those in the favelas were still being hit the hardest, the wage gap kept
widening and as the rich got richer, the poor kept moving in and expanding favelas.
During this time, income inequality had fallen drastically for the first time since the
1960s. As democracy picked up, it was clear that the differences in income were becoming more
and more noticeable. It also made the lack of education more visible to the government with the
average person only having over 8.1 years of an educational background. During Rousseffs
term, she promised to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of her term. Welfare programs
started popping up that would add some improvement to their standards of living. Although these
programs still did not offer an efficient wage in which to eat and live. Most of the deep
impoverished areas lied on the perimeter of the major cities (Reid 167-170).
Social policies and public health did see some improvements in this stretch. The average
life span rose over ten years from 1980 to 2010 and the infant mortality rate saw a drastic
decrease. The only problems with some of these public health programs is that they only reached
about one out of every four citizens due to the wage gap. It was clear that Brazil needed more
health care professionals. Being a democratic socialist, Rousseff pushed for a raise in the amount
of doctors in the country so that 1.95 doctors (average) did not take on over 1,000 patients. The
lack of education meant that there were not many local doctors to hire so she had to import over
4,000 new doctors from Cuba to help the deficit (Reid 174-175).
Favelas have become breeding grounds for poverty and crime. Police forces were not
equipped to deal with many of the issues within these favelas due to lack of funding. Many of the

departments were unreformed and under manned. Many police were untrained as well essentially
adding to the crime rate because of all the police brutality in an attempt to fight back against
crime. This all added to the already high prison population and prison reform was taking a while
to catch on (BBC 1-2).

Sources:

BBC. 2014, June 9th. Favela life: Rio's city within a city
Reid, M. (2014). Brazil: The troubled rise of a global power.