DISP 147 48
Jorge Fiori, Elizabeth Riley and Ronaldo Ramirez
Physical Upgrading and Social Integration in of Rio de Janeiro:
the Case of Favela Bairro
Favela Bairro is the largest-scale squatter
settlement upgrading programme imple-
mented in Latin America. It has gained in-
ternational recognition as an example of a
new generation of housing and environ-
mental upgrading programmes aiming at
the reduction of urban poverty and social
exclusion. Based on research carried out
by the authors, the article examines the
central concepts which have informed
Favela Bairro and the ways in which they
were operationalised [1]. The examination
is conducted in the light of seven policy
characteristics which the authors have
identified as typifying an emerging new
generation of housing and upgrading poli-
cies. The article argues that processes of
participation and democratisation are cen-
tral if the latest generation of poverty re-
duction initiatives are to have an impact
which is both substantive in scale and last-
ing in time. Yet, as demonstrated in the
case of Favela Bairro, it remains extremely
problematic for governments to implement
projects which devolve significant decision-
making powers to poor urban communities
and, even more difficult, to institutionalise
mechanisms for civil society participation
as a central part of state reform and de-
mocratisation.
This is an extended and modified version of
the paper ”Favela Bairro and a New Gener-
ation of Housing Programmes for the Urban
Poor” by the same authors, published in
GEOFORUM, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 521–531,
2001. Adapted with permission from Elsevier
Science.
Introduction
In Rio de Janeiro favelas (squatter settle-
ments) have long been recognised as
one of the most visible manifestations of
poverty in the city and as a symbol of
the inequalities that exist between the
rich and the poor. Favelas have been
part of the city’s landscape for over 100
years and have been the subject of nu-
2001
merous policies, programmes and proj-
ects which have variously sought their
removal or their assimilation into the city
fabric (see, for example, Baumann Bur-
gos, 1998). None have thus far suc-
ceeded, and as the levels of poverty, in-
equality and drug-related violence have
mounted over the previous two de-
cades, the divisions between the favelas
and the rest of the city have deepened.
While the favelas of Rio de Janeiro may
not uniformly house the poorest of the
city’s poor, their residents suffer from
sub-standard services and infrastructure,
ill-health, low levels of educational
attainment, social stigmatisation, vio-
lence, insecure employment, and low
and unstable incomes (Gilbert, 1995). It
is in this context that the Favela Bairro
upgrading programme was launched
by the Municipal Government of Rio de
Janeiro in 1994, aiming to provide the
necessary conditions that would enable
favelas to be seen as neighbourhoods
of the city (SMH, 1995b). Favela Bairro
is one of many programmes that to-
gether make up the housing policy of
the city, but of these Favela Bairro has
the most resources, the greatest scale,
and highest political profile. It aims to
upgrade all the municipality’s medium-
sized favelas (of between 500 and
2,500 households each) that make up
nearly one third of all favelas in Rio, but
which house around 60 percent of the
city’s total favela population (SMH,
1999a).
All Favela Bairro projects have a
large number of basic components,
making it the most ambitious and com-
prehensive of the large-scale upgrading
programmes in the developing world.
These components include: the installa-
tion and upgrading of water and sanita-
tion infrastructure, and public and do-
mestic lighting networks; reforestation;
the opening and paving of roads,
squares and walkways; elimination of
natural hazards; the construction of new
housing for essential resettlement; the
setting up of rubbish collection systems;
the commencement of land tenure regu-
larisation processes; the construction
and reform of buildings and their subse-
quent use as nursery schools, commun-
ity centres, and income generation and
training centres; the construction and
operation of new sports and leisure fa-
cilities; the construction of commercial
establishments (kiosks); and the cons-
truction and operation of social and ur-
ban advice centres.
Internationally, Favela Bairro is receiv-
ing considerable attention and recogni-
tion as an exemplary upgrading pro-
gramme aiming at reducing urban
poverty. Of course government initia-
tives to reduce poverty are far from
new, but what is now different is the
scale of current initiatives, their ambi-
tious objectives and their complex insti-
tutional arrangements and policy con-
tent. Such initiatives reflect the priority
that poverty reduction is now receiving
from policymakers, international agen-
cies, NGO’s, and communities alike.
While during the 1980’s and early
1990’s poverty remained largely absent
from national and international policy
agendas, since the mid-1990’s its re-
duction has become a top priority of or-
ganisations such as the World Bank, the
UN agencies, and various development
banks. This resurgence of interest stems
from the growth in poverty and inequal-
ity over the previous decades, with
much debate focusing on the adverse
impact of structural adjustment policies.
A substantial and influential body of lit-
erature has been produced examining
the concept of poverty (see, for exam-
ple: Amis, 1995; Chambers, 1997;
Jones, 1999; and Wratten, 1995), and
as a result, it is now broadly accepted
that the concept of poverty signifies
much more than just a lack of income,
also embracing factors such as ill-
health, poor access to essential ser-
vices, vulnerability and insecurity. Ac-
cording to the International Forum of Ur-
ban Poverty (1998) poverty is under-
stood as a multidimensional process, af-
fected by cultural conditions, interpreted
subjectively by the people living in
poverty, lived differently by people ac-
cording to their gender, age, ethnic ori-
gin and abilities, including many forms
of consumption that escape the cover-
age of incomes and the concept of
poverty lines.
In addition to the broad acceptance
of more qualitative understandings of

poverty, there also appears to be some
consensus on what should be done to re-
duce poverty. While there remains little
appetite to examine the causes of po-
verty, there is general support for the
need for economic growth, reform of
legislative frameworks, decentralisation
and reform of government, and invest-
ment in health, education and sanitation
infrastructure.
This growing convergence on what
poverty is and what should be done to
reduce it is increasingly evident in gov-
ernment policy documents, agency
agendas and strategy papers which all
demonstrate similar approaches, com-
mon concepts and a broadly shared
language. This same trend is now start-
ing to emerge in a piecemeal fashion in
the field of housing. Housing – in its
multi-dimensionality and its long-estab-
lished links with health, personal safety,
income generation, productivity, educa-
tional achievement, etc. – is, once
again, recognised as playing a key role
in the fight against poverty. Through an
examination of the urban poverty litera-
ture and policy documents, and through
an exploration of actual programmes
and practices which typify the current
approach to housing policy, we have
identified those elements of policy most
commonly advocated as essential to
poverty reduction.
Towards an Analytical and
Propositional Framework
Seven policy elements have been identi-
fied as part of a framework for analysis.
The first is derived from the literature on
the nature and concept of poverty. It is
the recognition that poverty is a com-
plex and multifaceted phenomenon,
lived differently by different people, and
signifying much more than low income.
In consequence, there is also a recogni-
tion of the need to disaggregate the
poor. “The poor” as a category should
not be seen as homogeneous, and fur-
thermore, some groups need to be sin-
gled out for special attention by policy
makers, most notably women and chil-
dren, who are frequently more vulnera-
ble to poverty than others. Secondly, a
DISP 147
multisectoral approach at both project
and policy levels is a characteristic pro-
moted by the emerging agenda as es-
sential if the multiple dimensions of
poverty are to be addressed in a co-or-
dinated and efficient manner. Thirdly,
there appears to be a revival of interest
in design, especially of public space
and buildings, advocating the need for
design and architecture of quality so a
to act as a vehicle for both social and
physical integration. Fourthly, is the is-
sue of scale, displaying a concern for
the project as a means to directly affect
people’s lives, but also a concern that
projects be implemented on such a
scale as to impact on the city as a
whole, acting as a means to reduce in-
equalities and disparities between rich
and poor neighbourhoods. The concept
of public-private partnerships is the fifth
element, advocating the efficiency gains
and cost benefits of involving private en-
terprises in planning, implementing, fi-
nancing and maintaining infrastructure
and services for the poor. The sixth ele-
ment is that of state reform, stressing the
need for the decentralisation of govern-
ment, fiscal reform, the reform of leg-
islative frameworks, and such like, and
aiming to make government more effi-
cient and transparent and urban legisla-
tion less cumbersome and contradictory.
Finally, the issues of participation and
democratisation perhaps achieve the
widest recognition as essential compo-
nents of any poverty initiative, stressing
the need to give the poor (and other
members of civil society) real decision-
making powers. As such participation is
no longer just a means to ensure the
smooth running of projects but a means
to empower, and thus a means to drive
forward the democratisation of (local)
government to ensure lasting change.
None of these policy elements are
new. They all present familiar “novel-
ties.” What is really new, however, is
their combination and the emphasis on
a search for a virtuous circle of syner-
getic relations that could continuously
condition each of the components and
hence determine the quality and extent
of the policy as a whole. The examina-
tion of these elements and their interac-
tion aims at providing a conceptual
49 2001
framework for the analysis of experi-
ences such as those of Favela Bairro as
much as it aims to use the example of
Favela Bairro to reflect upon the ambi-
tions and ambiguities of an emerging
new generation of policies, particularly
regarding the problematic policy issues
of participation and democratisation of
the structures of decision-making and
management. The basic hypothesis here
is that policies aimed at sustainable,
broadscale poverty alleviation must
be implemented in the context of in-
stitutional reforms that continuously
strengthen mechanisms for power shar-
ing, decentralisation and democratisa-
tion. This is more than a policy decision
and depends on the strength of civil sec-
tor organisations and grass-roots move-
ments. Indeed, participatory processes
initiated outside the sphere of the state
remain the cornerstone of institutional
reforms. It is from this position that these
processes can both enable the above-
mentioned synergetic relations and be
reinforced by them. Participation and in-
stitutional reform appear, in this way, as
a condition and expression of the new
policies and the new synergies, acting
as their point of departure and point of
arrival in a logic which is both top-down
and bottom-up.
Such a framework, which becomes
both analytical and propositional, re-
cognises that the specific characteristics
of the key policy components will vary
over time and place, reflecting the im-
portance of social, economic and politi-
cal contexts. It also stresses the com-
plexities of developing and implement-
ing this policy approach, especially
given the political sensitivity of the com-
ponents. Indeed, the challenge lies in
the fact that institutional reform and the
democratisation of institutions – which
are at the heart of these new-generation
policies – are, by definition, time- and
context-specific. They are the materiali-
sation of concrete power relations and
the expression of specific, contradictory
and conflicting, social and political cir-
cumstances. Hence the impossibility of
mechanical replication of these pro-
cesses and policies as a model. This
would be the negation of what the new
generation of policies are about and

would ignore the factors which made
them both necessary and possible.
What we can argue is that there are cer-
tain parameters and elements which, in
their specific manifestations, are in-
creasingly present everywhere and
should be part of any serious attempt
to address issues of poverty, particularly
through urban and housing policies.
Rather than a model for new generation
policies, what is suggested is a method-
ological approach which, ultimately
rooted in and propelled by processes of
social participation, is and should be
translated into a set of specific policies
for specific contexts.
Housing Policy and Favelas in
Rio de Janeiro in the 1980’s and
Early 1990’s
With the election of Leonel Brizola as
the governor of the state of Rio in 1982,
there was an accentuation of populist
policies in Rio, with massive pro-
grammes to build schools and legalise
land tenure. Whereas previous non-con-
ventional housing initiatives in Rio had
been small in scale and experimental in
approach, the Brizola government
launched a massive campaign to install
water and sewerage systems in all of
Rio’s favelas, and indeed nearly
250,000 people benefited. Even more
ambitious was the “Cada Família, Um
Lote” land tenure legalisation pro-
gramme that was designed not only to
legalise but also upgrade one million
plots in favelas and illegal sub-divisions
throughout the state. Instead just under
23,000 deeds were issued (Araujo,
1988), and the upgrading of just two
favelas was completed. Meanwhile, the
municipal government of Rio was also
active in favelas during the 1980’s,
through the Municipal Social Develop-
ment Department (SMDS) set up in
1979 specifically to work with the low-
income population. In 1982 it launched
the “Projeto Mutirão” (Self-Help Project),
whereby community labour would un-
dertake limited upgrading work, espe-
cially of sanitation infrastructure. In ad-
dition, the SMDS started building and
operating nursery schools in Rio’s fave-
DISP 147
las, and working with the municipal rub-
bish collection company (Comlurb) to
establish waste removal systems. Never-
theless, throughout the 1980’s, both mu-
nicipal and state programmes to im-
prove the housing conditions of Rio’s
poor suffered from weak administra-
tion, paternalism, political conflict and
scarce resources, a product of decades
of dictatorship and of the fragmentation
and marginalisation of housing policy
following the closure of the BNH.
During the 1980’s, the percentage of
people living below the poverty line in
Rio increased from 27.2 percent to
32.5 percent; Rio became the city with
the highest absolute number of poor
people in Brazil, standing at nearly
3.64 million, and had the highest index
of inequality with a Gini coefficient of
0.673 in 1990 (Cardoso and Lago,
1993). Throughout the decade, the pop-
ulation living in favelas on the urban pe-
riphery grew by 50.7 percent (Lago,
1992) and in addition, there was a
marked increase in violence within and
around Rio’s favelas associated with the
illegal trafficking of drugs and the vio-
lent and repressive style of the police
forces. Meanwhile, the National Move-
ment for Urban Reform was influencing
the shape of the new Federal Constitu-
tion of 1988, and for housing, new leg-
islative instruments were developed to
improve housing conditions and above
all, establish local government control
over land use. In Rio, the incom-
ing mayor embraced these challenges
through a master plan and later, a
strategic plan for the city, recognising
the need to address the low-income
housing problem not through localised
interventions but as part of an urban de-
velopment strategy for the whole city. To
fulfil this objective the Municipal Hous-
ing Department (Secretaria Municipal
de Habitação – SMH) was set up in
1993 with programmes to legalise sub-
divisions, issue land titles, encourage
the use of empty land for low-income
housing, resettle those living in areas of
natural risk, and upgrade the city’s fave-
las (SMH, 1993). By 1994 there were
661 favelas in the municipality, housing
nearly one million people (IBGE, 1994).
Many of the key staff involved in the
50 2001
development of the city’s housing policy
initially worked for the Municipal Social
Development Department (Secretaria
Municipal de Desenvolvimento Social –
SMDS) and other municipal agencies
and they used their knowledge of prob-
lems of the favelas in their design of the
Favela Bairro upgrading programme.
Prior to the creation of the SMH, a small
group of municipal employees would
meet informally to discuss what elements
should be incorporated into a model
multisectoral upgrading project. Ultima-
tely their objective was to work on a
large scale and go beyond the limited
and piecemeal approaches which had
dominated the 1980’s and involved just
a limited number of municipal actors.
Due to the activities of this group, by the
time the Housing Department was for-
mally established, the housing policy of
Rio de Janeiro had already been de-
cided upon and the design of Favela
Bairro drawn up.
The Favela Bairro Concepts of
Poverty and the Poor
The concept of poverty which informs
the Favela Bairro programme is, in ac-
cordance with the trend away from nar-
row quantitative understandings, one
which reflects the complex mix of needs,
economic deprivation, cultural, physical
and social exclusion which charac-
terises living conditions in Rio’s favelas.
It is a reflection of both recent increases
in urban violence and poverty which
have witnessed the further stigmatisa-
tion of Rio’s favelas by the mass media,
and of historical trends in Rio’s poverty
which have seen the poor concentrated
in specific types of settlement which
are easily identifiable as “for the poor”.
Given that sharp divisions between the
poor and the better off have long char-
acterised the city of Rio, it is unsurpris-
ing that the objectives of Favela Bairro
centre on concepts such as social and
physical inclusion and exclusion. Ac-
cording to one SMH official, for exam-
ple, Favela Bairro “… is about enabling
people to fulfil their dreams, it’s about
giving a chance for people to have ac-
cess to the city through which they can

realise their aspirations … it is linked to
immediate needs but goes far beyond
that to embrace new values and allow
for the construction of new citizens.”
Whilst the objectives of Favela Bairro
are informed by a vision of an inte-
grated city without sharp inequalities,
among the diverse actors in the pro-
gramme there is understandable scepti-
cism regarding the extent to which its
projects can make that vision a reality.
According to the resident of one up-
graded favela, for example, his settle-
ment “… is now more integrated physi-
cally with its surroundings, but it will al-
ways be a favela for those who live in-
side it and outside it. It takes a long time
to change the way a community is seen,
the way its identity is perceived.” Thus
while much of the official language sur-
rounding the programme refers to con-
cepts such as citizenship, many inter-
viewees recognised that favela residents
would only be citizens if they could ex-
ercise, as well as know, their rights, and
this would be a long and complex social
and political process needing the for-
mation of new values and attitudes on
all sides.
Although Favela Bairro is founded
upon an understanding of poverty as a
complex social and cultural phenome-
non, without entirely ignoring its eco-
nomic dimension, the programme does
not display an explicit concern with un-
derstanding how the poor as a diverse
group variously experience the condi-
tion of poverty. The original design of
the programme was not a product of
participatory research into the condi-
tions and needs of favela residents, or
even of a process of policy consultation
involving community or non-government
groups. Instead, as mentioned above,
Favela Bairro was shaped by the expe-
riences of a small group of municipal of-
ficials whose work in Rio’s favelas dur-
ing the 1980’s brought them into daily
contact with the demands of favela resi-
dents for better sanitation infrastructure
and public services. These demands in-
formed the basic character of Favela
Bairro upgrading projects, with each
project sharing the aim of meeting the
needs of favela residents as a collective
through the provision of collective ser-
DISP 147
vices and infrastructure. As such, Favela
Bairro does not seek out those who are
most vulnerable, try to understand the
condition of their poverty and address
it, but instead the programme treats
favelas as relatively homogenous phe-
nomena.
The weakness of the social compo-
nents of Favela Bairro was a consistent
criticism made by interviewees, com-
menting on its emphasis on physical up-
grading at the expense of addressing
the varying social, cultural and eco-
nomic needs of favela residents. Thus,
while interviewees acknowledged the
importance of improving local environ-
mental conditions, the ability of Favela
Bairro to fulfil its objectives of improving
income levels, access to employment,
and access to cultural facilities was per-
ceived to be weak. For example, while
the income and employment generation
programmes of Favela Bairro were, on
the one hand, perceived by a majority
of interviewees to be essential and gen-
erally working well, on the other hand,
they were said to be limited by their lack
of resources and their inability to ad-
dress the structural causes of unemploy-
ment and low wages at a city or na-
tional level. Thus, according to Ricardo
Gouvêa of Bento Rubião, “Everything to
a certain extent reduces poverty, if you
enable one person to sell sweets in a
street corner then you are reducing that
person’s poverty, but this won’t have
any kind of structural impact.” Never-
theless, the strengthening after 1997 of
the income generation initiatives of
Favela Bairro was widely praised and
the intentions of the Employment Depart-
ment (SMTb) were recognised by some
interviewees as serious, though their in-
ability to raise the income and employ-
ment opportunities of more than a lucky
few was also widely acknowledged.
While Favela Bairro is more effective
in meeting the collective needs of resi-
dents for services and infrastructure and
less so in targeting those with particular
needs, this does not imply that Favela
Bairro has no impact on the poverty
within the favelas where it is imple-
mented. Not only does the programme
provide, albeit on an insufficient scale,
nursery school places, projects for the
51 2001
elderly, illiterate, youths and children,
as well as employment and income gen-
eration opportunities, but the basic in-
frastructure and services it installs ad-
dress some of the fundamental problems
suffered by the poor, with physical up-
grading having clear social benefits.
When the interviewees were asked
about the ability of Favela Bairro to tar-
get those households most in need of
support, there was widespread recogni-
tion that Favela Bairro was limited in
this respect because its resources and
focus are primarily for the meeting of
collective needs. For example, accord-
ing to one member of the Grupo dos 16
(organisation of favela leaders), “I think
we would like it a lot if the needs of in-
dividuals could be met, but under the
methodology of Favela Bairro what
is treated is the whole general context.
Its purpose is not to improve the cir-
cumstances of individuals, a particular
house or suchlike.” The nursery schools,
community centres, sport facilities, train-
ing and literacy courses, co-operatives
and kiosks are, however, aimed at ad-
dressing the needs of specific groups,
and to take advantage of these social
projects residents have to meet certain
criteria to establish their level of need.
Thus, some targeting of resource alloca-
tion toward specific groups is evident,
for example in the offering of places on
basic literacy courses to the illiterate, or
of nursery school places to the children
of women-headed households. In addi-
tion, according to interviews with favela
residents and those working at the proj-
ect level, the resettling of households
from areas of natural risk usually en-
sures that some of the poorest house-
holds (which tend to congregate in the
least desirable and most unsafe areas)
benefit from new housing units or com-
pensation to buy alternative secure
properties.
By meeting the historical demands of
Rio’s favela residents for basic infra-
structure and services, according to
one resident, Favela Bairro addresses
“... everything that we in the popular
favela movement have ever wanted to
be done.” In addition, while Favela
Bairro may not pay explicit attention to
understanding who the poor are, in

practice it does address the needs of
some of the most vulnerable groups liv-
ing in Rio’s favelas.
Favela Bairro Projects and Policy as
Multisectoral
When considering the components of
the physical upgrading work alone it is
apparent that Favela Bairro projects are
multisectoral. There is, however, a wide-
ly held perception among the diverse
actors involved in Favela Bairro that
physical upgrading on its own is not
enough, and that whilst upgrading can
improve quality of life, only education,
training and income generation initia-
tives can ensure social development and
integration. At the start of the pro-
gramme the bias toward the upgrading
of the physical environment was encour-
aged by the funding priorities of the In-
ter-American Development Bank (IDB)
and even when the bank was per-
suaded to allocate resources for the con-
struction of buildings for social projects,
funds for the implementation of those
projects had to come from other
sources. In time, however, the social pol-
icy components of Favela Bairro have
grown in strength, especially after the
establishment of the SMTb in 1997. Fur-
thermore, within the SMH the social pol-
icy team has also developed over time,
though it still remains comparatively
small. Indeed, according to the Man-
ager of Favela Bairro, “... the previous
clientelistic way of working with favelas
has created little interest in, or capacity
for, new approaches to social develop-
ment.” As a result, whilst Favela Bairro
projects are multisectoral in their combi-
nation of the physical and the social,
they still reveal a heavy bias toward the
physical. That bias is also further rein-
forced during project implementation
when the complex projects are imple-
mented in difficult environments, creat-
ing a set of pressures and constraints
that militate against lengthy and difficult
processes of social development, and
instead give architects and engineers
control over the final shape of each pro-
ject.
Procedural and practical problems,
have been identified by many intervie-
DISP 147
wees as conspiring against the multisec-
toral nature of Favela Bairro projects.
For example, Luis Alberto Simões, one
of the architects responsible for the pro-
ject of Formiga favela, argued that the
standardisation of project design
favoured by the SMH undermined inno-
vation and the tailoring of projects to
each community and their diverse
needs. He stated that “... it is unlikely
one could ever develop a model design
and a model project in view of the het-
erogeneity of favelas and their some-
times extremely difficult locations. If one
implements a standard project one ends
up making alterations which are in fact
deformations.” The quantity and quality
of information available for project de-
sign was also criticised. Newton Ferraz,
General Co-ordinator of Ambiental en-
gineering firm, for example, commented
that “... the survey material which in-
forms the project design and planning is
often poor, creating many construction
problems and problems of co-ordination
between the different components of a
project”.
Other problems experienced at the
project level and acting to undermine
the programme’s effectiveness were
blamed on the time pressures inherent to
Favela Bairro. One of the co-ordinators
of projects at SMH considered that time
pressures prevented the establishment of
the partnerships needed to strengthen
the social components of Favela Bairro
projects. Carmen Martins of the munici-
pal planning institute IPLANRIO (now
known as the Pereira Passos Institute –
IPP) believed that the speed with which
projects have to be planned prevents
adequate assessment of the community
needs and tends to limit the possibilities
of a multisectoral approach. In addition
the bidding procedures followed by the
SMH have been criticised. The result is
often the interruption of work while wait-
ing for more funds, the reduction in
quality and the dropping of some com-
ponents of the project, affecting in this
way the integrated balance of the inter-
vention.
Multisectoriality at the project level
also concerns the relationships estab-
lished between the various actors in-
volved, as well as the range of sectors
52 2001
represented in a project, thus involving
the way agents and actors participate in
the process of decision-making and
management. Many of the interviewees
stressed the important role played by
private sector architectural practices,
and while there was considerable
praise for what they have achieved,
widely held (including among the archi-
tects themselves) was the view that their
role has been very problematic at times
and not always conducive to, or com-
patible with, an integrated approach.
Lack of experience of working in favelas
at the scale of Favela Bairro and in a
multisectoral manner, lack of experience
of working in a participatory manner,
and bias towards a more design and
physical orientated approach, were
some of the problems raised.
Considering the multisectoral charac-
ter of Favela Bairro at the policy level, in
charge of the development and man-
agement of Favela Bairro is the SMH,
with its officials overseeing the project
design stage, the upgrading work itself,
land regularisation, social policy, and
maintenance policy, amongst other func-
tions. During the project design phase,
architectural practices work in consulta-
tion with the favela residents to plan
their projects and obtain community ap-
proval. During the construction work,
private construction firms, architects, en-
gineering consultancy firms, utility com-
panies, and various government depart-
ments are all present. Once upgrading
is complete, the operation of the various
social facilities Favela Bairro constructs
is undertaken by a range of municipal
departments (most significantly the
SMTb and SMDS), who often subcon-
tract local NGO’s. As such, the function
of the SMH is to oversee and manage
the programme, co-ordinating the range
of actors, reporting to the IDB, and lob-
bying other municipal departments to
get involved. For the latter it utilises two
macro-policy forums (macrofunções), set
up to foster and institutionalise multisec-
toral policymaking, and indeed, over
time, the SMH has succeeded in per-
suading some departments who had
never before worked in favelas to par-
ticipate in Favela Bairro.
Despite the complex institutional ar-

rangements in place, Favela Bairro
does not reveal an integrated approach
to policy formulation or implementation
which would involve a range of govern-
ment departments in the common fi-
nancing, planning, implementation and
management of all aspects of the pro-
gramme. Instead, with some depart-
ments (for example, Culture, Urban Af-
fairs, and Environment), the SMH has a
relation of co-operation, whilst with oth-
ers (SMTb and SMDS), the relationship
is closer and can be described as one of
co-ordination. In other words, the SMH
remains firmly in control of all aspects of
Favela Bairro, driving the search for
new partners within the municipal gov-
ernment, but at the same time keeping
firm hold of the ownership of the pro-
gramme. According to one SMH offi-
cial, “… through the SMH control over
housing policy is centralised, control
over the housing budget is centralised,
but the execution of policy is decen-
tralised, though the definitions and the
decisions regarding projects are always
taken within the SMH.”
While the SMH can be criticised for
failing to share (political) power to the
extent it could, it must also be recog-
nised that in terms of previous housing
initiatives, Favela Bairro demonstrates
the involvement of a broader range of
actors than ever seen before in Rio. The
prevalent culture within the government
still favours single-sector planning and
intervention, and there was also criti-
cism of some departments who have
never catered for the favela population
and remain reluctant to do so as a mat-
ter of principle. According to one SMH
official, “… to achieve internal integra-
tion within the public sector is very com-
plex; there are many conflicts which ba-
sically boil down to conflicts of power”,
while according to another, “... what ex-
ists is the idea of integration but there is
resistance to it at all levels and nobody
has been able to break down the barri-
ers that prevent true integration”.
Scale and City Integration
By mid-1999 Favela Bairro was opera-
tional in 82 medium-sized favelas. The
programme is now in its fourth phase,
DISP 147
Phase Total number of
beneficiary
households
Phase 1 15,058
Phase 2 28,782
Phase 3 25,386
Grand Total 69,226
Source: SMH, 1999b
Table 1: Number of Beneficiaries from Phases
1–3 of Favela Bairro
during which another 66 favelas will be
upgraded, but while Favela Bairro is un-
derway in a large number of settle-
ments, due to delays experienced dur-
ing the initial phases of the programme,
upgrading was complete in only 12
favelas by mid-1999. Table 1 reveals
the number of people and households
affected in each of the previous three
phases, with the first phase concentrat-
ing primarily upon relatively simple and
consolidated favelas of around one
thousand households, and with the sub-
sequent phases covering larger and
more complicated settlements.
According to the academic Reiner
Randolph of IPPUR/UFRJ, the “... most
notable feature of Favela Bairro, in con-
trast with previous approaches, is its
scale.” What has been achieved by
Favela Bairro is already more ambitious
and of a larger scale than anything
which has been done before in Rio or,
indeed, anywhere else in Brazil. While
the fully finished projects are few, the
number of favelas where Favela Bairro
is underway is very large. This is espe-
cially impressive given that this has hap-
pened over the relatively short period of
five years.
Scale in Favela Bairro is not, how-
ever, merely a question of numbers of
projects. While the programme demon-
strates a strong commitment to the proj-
ect as a means to directly tackle the
problems of the poor, its objective goes
beyond improving living conditions for
favela residents to embrace the broader
city-scale objective of social integration.
As such, Favela Bairro illustrates an in-
terpretation of scale that embraces a vi-
sion of the city as a vehicle for the inte-
gration of a substantial proportion of
the population that has long been seg-
regated and excluded. Leaving aside
Favela Bairro’s actual ability to foster
physical and social integration, what
the programme demonstrates is a strong
53 2001
Total number of Area affected
beneficiaries (hectares)
55,251 158.40
97,825 247.30
83,945 298.29
237,021 703.99
vision of how the city should be and
how the upgrading of favelas can con-
tribute to that vision. In Rio, there has al-
ways been a tendency to see the favelas
in terms of their impact upon the rest of
that city and the middle classes, but that
impact has nearly always been inter-
preted (especially by the press) as neg-
ative. What Favela Bairro is now at-
tempting to do is redefine that relation-
ship to make it positive, to redefine the
perceptions the (economically, socially,
culturally and geographically) divided
sides of the city have of each other. In
this way, Favela Bairro should be under-
stood “… in the context of increases in
the favela population, violence and
crime, growing poverty and unemploy-
ment, the realisation that you couldn’t
improve the city without improving the
favelas, and a new way of thinking as il-
lustrated by the Master Plan that
stressed the need to build bridges be-
tween different groups in society” (SMH
official). Favela Bairro had a consider-
able effect in changing the perception
of favelas in the city, for “Favela Bairro
forced the city as a whole to take a po-
sition in relation to the subject of favelas
and in relation to a policy which in-
volves a considerable amount of fiscal
resources” (IBASE).
Perceived to contribute greatly to so-
cial change and integration is the shift
in the conduct of the drug trade that
Favela Bairro aims to achieve. This ob-
jective does not appear among the offi-
cially declared aims of the programme,
but nevertheless was declared to be one
of the priorities of Favela Bairro by SMH
staff and other actors. According to
Favela Bairro founder Márcia Coutinho,
for example, “To my mind it isn’t urban
projects that integrate society, they can
Continued on page 56

Fernão Cardim
Fernão Cardim is a favela located on flat
land in the neighbourhood of Inhaúma in the
Engenho de Dentro area in the north of Rio
de Janeiro. It has a population of 3,183 res-
idents or 875 households, and occupies an
area of 4.5 hectares. The settlement was
established in 1951 when the area was still
rural. Over the years the Residents’ Associa-
tion of Fernão Cardim undertook basic
upgrading work with support from various
governmental and non-governmental foun-
dations and agencies, private companies,
the Catholic Church, the SMDS (through the
Projeto Mutirão), and the state government
(through the Cada Família Um Lote regulari-
sation programme, and through the Pro-San-
ear sanitation upgrading programme).
When the Favela Bairro programme was
first presented to the community in 1995, 95
percent of the houses in Fernão Cardim were
made from brick, and 5 percent from wood.
Most of the latter were located along the
banks of the Faria Timbó river that flooded
the settlement regularily. Land in the settle-
ment was under municipal ownership with a
small part being privately owned. The sur-
rounding neighbourhood is characterised by
commercial/industrial enterprises and a hos-
pital nearby. Like many favelas, Fernão
Cardim had just one access road to the
community, a characteristic imposed by the
local drug traffickers for their own protec-
tion, and Fernão Cardim also suffered from
high levels of violence associated with the
drug traffic.
Fernão Cardim was included in Phase 1
of the Favela Bairro programme and was
one of the first projects to be finished, and
the only settlement to date to have its land
tenure fully regularised. The project was
designed by architects from the firm Planeja-
mento Arquitetônico e Ambiental (PAA). The
development of the project plans costed Rs
120,445, and the upgrading work itself Rs
5,334,981. The project included: improved
access (through opening new roads and
widening existing lanes); the channelling of
the river (with non-Favela Bairro funds) and
upgrading of surrounding areas; a new
block of 22 flats for those needing to be
resettled; the reform of the community square
and football pitch; the building of a new
sports area; installation of leisure equip-
ment; the construction of a nursery school
and sewing co-operative; installation of sew-
erage, water and drainage systems, rubbish
collection and public lighting; the planting of
trees and installation of street furniture;
building of kiosks and a POUSO; the imple-
mentation of various IT and training courses;
and the installation of public telephones. The
Residents’ Association has also been suc-
cessful in working with the near-by shopping
mall, thereby accessing resources for reform
of the Association building and the opening
of a health clinic on the premises, and from
a nearby supermarket and McDonald’s they
DISP 147 54 2001
receive donations of food. Finally the Asso- their homes further. In general, those inter-
ciation has also acquired the financial back- viewed in Fernão Cardim expressed their
ing of the British Consulate in Rio for pur- satisfaction with the results of Favela Bairro,
chase equipment for the sewing co-opera- describing the settlement as being more inte-
tive. grated with the surrounding neighbourhood.
According to interviews conducted with Indeed, according to one resident, “Now as
members of the Residents’ Association, other a result of Favela Bairro the residents have
community groups, and residents of Fernão duties as well as rights, for example they
Cardim, most residents were at first sceptical have to get rid of their illegal electricity con-
about the intervention of the government nections, but when they start paying taxes
through Favela Bairro, believing that it they will have the right to complain about
would not happen. Plans for the settlement services and ask for better ones. Favela Bair-
also generated controversy, especially re- ro leads to mutual agreement between resi-
garding the resettlement of those families liv- dents and the state, turning residents into
ing along the banks of the river. normal citizens, like the rest of the popula-
However, when work got underway it was tion.” Nevertheless, it was acknowledged
reported that residents became more enthu- that changing the identity of an irregular
siastic and took more interest in the project. settlement is not a simple process, with one
During the development of the project plans, residents declaring “It takes a long time to
however, the architects worked mainly with change the way a community is seen, the
the Residents’ Association, and it took PAA way its identity is perceived. However, peo-
around 6 months to develop the intervention ple’s language has changed and nobody
plan for the residents to approve. It was now talks about Fernão Cardim as a favela
reported that the wider participation by resi- but instead as a neighbourhood.”
dents was neither encouraged nor discour-
aged by the Residents’ Association and the
architects, with individual residents deciding
whether or not to take an active role in the
planning phase, and most of them deciding
not to become involved. With the upgrading
of Fernão Cardim now complete, most of
those interviewed reported that Favela Bair-
ro had indeed met the priority needs of the
community, especially with the channelling
of the river. However, the income generation
activities in the settlement were regarded as
inadequate and unemployment was report-
ed to be high in the settlement. Indeed, it
was reported that the SMTb IT courses and
first grade education course had folded,
though the sewing co-operative provides
employment for 16 people and the kiosks
built at the entrance to the settlement are
regarded as successful. Also regarded as
problematic is the quality of the sewerage
system laid, with reports of blockages being
common, though CEDAE now employs two
community workers to ensure the system
functions smoothly. Continuity of resources
for the operation of the social projects of
Favela Bairro was also highlighted as a
problem, especially with regard to sports
and leisure activities, and a community cen-
tre that appeared in the project plans was
never built though residents could not
explain why.
It was acknowledged that one area of the
settlement, that located on private land, had
benefited less from Favela Bairro than the
rest of the community, this also being the
area where the cancelled community centre
was due to be built. In addition, it was
reported that house prices have risen con- Fig. 1: The river that used to flood Fernão
siderably since Favela Bairro was complet- Cardim, now channeled.
ed, with average house prices reported to
Fig. 2: The main square reformed by Favela
be around Rs 25,000, though it was
Bairro.
observed that very few people had left the
settlement. Many people were also said to Fig. 3: The kiosks built on the edge of the
be undertaking construction work to improve settlement.

The Mangueira Complex
Mangueira is in the north zone of Rio de
Janeiro, not far from the Maracanã football
stadium, and is famous for its samba club.
Made up of 4 favelas (Morro dos Telégrafos,
Candelária, Chalé and Olaria), it is collec-
tively known as the Mangueira complex. The
total population of the 4 favelas at the start
of Favela Bairro was 17,308 or 4,229
households, settled over an area of 26.8
hectares. As such, the Mangueira complex is
one of the largest squatter areas to be tack-
led by Favela Bairro, and it has presented
numerous problems for the Housing Depart-
ment, including technical difficulties, finan-
cial problems, and conflict with the local
communities. The project planning stage
took around 8 months to complete and was
undertaken by the architects Paulo Casé and
Luiz Aciloi from the firm Arquitetos Associa-
dos Ltd at a cost of Rs 552,006. While
Mangueira was included in Phase 2 of
Favela Bairro, with the programme now
being in Phase 4, like Formiga, the project
remains far from complete, and to date
resources assigned to the upgrading work
amount to Rs 14,709,029.
The architects of the project reported that
they developed their initial plans for the com-
munity on the basis of 3 or 4 visits to the
favela, and complained that very few resi-
dents understood what the upgrading pro-
ject was about. Indeed the final project
included around 400 plans and the
community “... would look at the plans and
not see anything” (Paulo Casé). The space
for community participation in the develop-
ment of the project was also criticised by the
residents’ associations of the 4 favelas who
complained that their influence was limited,
that the project does not correspond to the
needs and demands of residents, and that
the officials only listen to the community
when residents refuse to co-operate and
cause problems. Indeed, according to the
president of one of the Residents’ Associa-
tions, “The people from the SMH give us
what they think we need, but they don’t live
here. You need to live here to know what is
needed”.
The technical and financial problems
experienced during the initial phase of the
construction work in Mangueira led to the
suspension of the project and at the time of
the research, the upgrading work had not
yet been restarted. Technically, the topo-
graphical survey work undertaken in
Mangueira did not uncover the many physi-
cal problems that later plagued the construc-
tion work, causing delays and forcing alter-
ations in project plans to be essential. The
soil cover on the hillside, for example, is
rarely more than 2 metres deep and below
that are layers of rock and huge deposits of
compacted rubbish. As such the construction
work itself has led to the destabilisation of
the hillside, leading to changes in plans, the
need for more geological engineering work,
DISP 147 55 2001
and the resettlement of more residents (ini- reform of the police services is taking place,
tially it was thought around 200 households thereby exposing residents to the danger of
would have to be resettled but this figure has further police repression. Finally, while it
now risen to around 400). Such changes to was acknowledged that the very poor on the
the project led financial resources to run out hillside are benefiting from Favela Bairro
(though there are also allegations made of through their resettlement in the new blocks
fraud), and thus the project came to a stand- of flats, representatives of the local residents’
still. associations called for Favela Bairro to
While the project has been paralysed, the invest more in educational, health and cul-
SMH supervisor of the project was replaced tural facilities, and also suggested that the
and a management consultancy firm con- residents’ associations themselves should be
tracted to oversee the remainder of the work. directly strengthened by Favela Bairro
To date water and sewerage work has been through the payment of association staff who
undertaken, 5 nursery schools are being generally work on a voluntary basis.
built or reformed, a sports area has been fin-
ished and blocks of flats have been built to
resettle residents. Supplementary funds are,
however, being made available to finish the
project, with access roads, paving, income
generation centres, additional housing, a
POUSO, and reforestation work still to be
undertaken.
The paralysis of Favela Bairro in
Mangueira has not helped relations with the
community. At the time of the research, for
example, the SMH and site officials were at
loggerheads with residents over the develop-
ment of an area of land bought by the muni-
cipal government and where more replace-
ment housing is to be built. In contrast the
local residents are demanding that the land
be used for another football pitch, to add to
that already laid by Favela Bairro a little
way up the hillside. The need for constant
additions to the list of houses needing to be
demolished has also fostered the perception
that Favela Bairro aims to rehouse all those
living in dangerous houses, resulting in con-
flict and dissatisfaction because this is not
the case. Those houses not included on the
demolition list but judged by their occupants
to be dangerous should instead be covered
by the Morar Sem Risco programme, but to
enter that programme involves houses being
assessed by the Civil Defense Service, a
process that is reported to be slow and
bureaucratic. Finally, delays to the project
have exacerbated the scepticism of resi-
dents, for example, according to the Presi-
dent of the Residents’ Association of Can-
delária, “The Favela Bairro project is good,
it is necessary, but it keeps on stopping ...
We don’t want the project to end here
because we need it, but we do want the
problems to be acknowledged. Every time
they start a job and don’t finish it the com-
munity gets more disillusioned ... I want
Favela Bairro to do what is best for us and
not to treat the whole project as a package.”
The residents of the Mangueira complex
and their community representatives com-
plained that to date the quality of work done
and materials used by Favela Bairro were
poor, especially with regard to the sewerage Fig. 1: Part of the Mangeira complex with
system laid. There were also concerns raised the new housing on the right of the photo.
about the ability of residents to pay new util-
Fig. 2: The new housing blocks built for
ity bills and taxes, and it was observed that
essential resettlement.
while Favela Bairro opens up the settlement
to facilitate the access of the police, no Fig. 3: The sports field and facilities.

facilitate circulation, but that is all. If you
don’t confront the drug traffickers in a
determined way, integration will not
happen.” Similarly, the Favela Bairro
Manager declared that “The most im-
portant negative impact of the favelas
on the rest of the city comes from the vi-
olence of the drug trade” and hence dis-
arming of drug traffickers through the
transformation of the built environment
leads to reformed behaviour of traffick-
ers and police, with immediate benefits
in both the favelas and the rest of the
city. This “... reduction of violence
through the establishment of the urban
order” (Maria Lúcia Petersen) thus
emerges as one of the most important
components of Favela Bairro in terms of
its objective of integrating the favelas
and the city.
The potential of Favela Bairro to di-
minish the power and violence of the
drug trade was, nevertheless, ques-
tioned by many interviewees. Accord-
ing to the academic Maria Alice
Rezende from IUPERJ, the programme
cannot bring about fundamental change
because the Brazilian police forces
were untouched by the constitutional re-
forms of 1988 and still reflect the tactics
and structures of the era of dictatorship.
This concern was also echoed by those
living and working in Rio’s favelas. Ri-
cardo Gouvêa of Bento Rubião NGO
declared that public security “… is a
strong motive for turning favelas into
neighbourhoods, not from the point of
view of citizenship but instead to let po-
lice cars enter the favelas.” Similarly,
Celso from Mangueira, said “Favela
Bairro ... is based on a great idea, to re-
inforce the citizenship rights we have,
but not to repress us. We need roads to
enable access by ambulances, com-
merce, rubbish trucks and such like, but
not just to enable police repression”.
Thus while Favela Bairro’s intervention
in public spaces, removing barriers and
making new places from communal use
may lead the local drug traffickers to re-
treat and be less visible, the ability of
Favela Bairro to change the conduct of
the police (who remain under state con-
trol) is limited.
The viability of Favela Bairro actually
achieving integration between favelas
DISP 147
and the formal city was also questioned
on other grounds by several intervie-
wees. While recognising the ability of
Favela Bairro to reduce some of the
physical barriers between favelas and
the city, the architect Luis Alberto
Simões, for example, declared “… this
discourse about integration is compli-
cated because physical integration can-
not bring about social integration. We
try to give the physical upgrading the
right characteristics that will facilitate in-
tegration, but you don’t directly bring
about integration through construction
work.” Interviewees living in favelas
also questioned the idea that upgrading
alone could bring integration. From
Formiga favela, Pastor Sebastião, for
example, argued that real integration
demands cultural change, and that
while it is possible to rename favelas as
neighbourhoods, it was not possible to
change what they are.
The viability of integration was not
only questioned on conceptual grounds,
but also for practical reasons. Those liv-
ing in favelas affected by Favela Bairro
raised the problem of the affordability
of new charges for utility services and
new taxes. For example, Carlos, from
one of the residents’ associations of the
Mangueira complex argued that “If
Favela Bairro has really come here to
improve living conditions but also to
charge us for it so as to turn Mangueira
into a neighbourhood, you have to re-
member that the majority of us only earn
about two minimum salaries.”
The city is an effective level for plan-
ning and policymaking; assessing and
addressing the needs of the city in an in-
tegrated fashion is crucial in order to
prevent the further segregation of the
poor from the non-poor. Interventions of
a sufficient size ensure a more efficient
use of resources as economies of scale
are reached, with these savings not only
being financial, but also in terms of the
time and skills devoted to planning and
implementing policies and programmes.
More importantly in terms of poverty al-
leviation, however, is the idea that inter-
ventions at the city scale can reduce the
disparities between rich and poor areas
of the city, avoiding the danger of the
growing segregation which is associa-
56 2001
ted to – and reinforced by – isolated
and small scale projects. It is clear that
scale and integration are strongly re-
lated and interdependent but while the
approach and ambitions of Favela
Bairro are quite clear in this respect, the
achievements are still debatable.
Design and Use of Public Space in
Favela Bairro
In operationalising the objective of so-
cial integration, Favela Bairro reveals a
strong reliance on the role that public
space can play in bringing people
together, stressing the importance of
quality design and architecture. Public
space is used by Favela Bairro as the
main means to ensure that projects have
an impact on their surrounding neigh-
bourhoods and on the city as a whole.
New roads, squares, building and facil-
ities are designed to break down the
barriers that have long divided favelas
from the rest of the city, ultimately en-
abling people who have never before
entered a favela to drive through the set-
tlements, visit cultural events in the fave-
las, or make use of their commerce. It is
also important to stress that the barriers
between the favelas and the rest of the
city are not just social, based on preju-
dice and fear, but also physical and the
result of drug traffickers erecting walls
and other obstacles to protect their terri-
tory from the police and rival gangs,
thereby isolating residents from the city
and the city from the favelas. Such bar-
riers, according to Favela Bairro’s Man-
ager, “… reinforce their identity as fave-
las,” and so public space is used by the
programme as both a symbolic and
practical mechanism to generate physi-
cal and social integration.
In addition, and just as importantly,
architecture, design and public space
serve as one of the central means to in-
troduce physical and social change into
the favelas themselves, introducing sym-
bols of the formal city and of the state
into environments whose layout and
structures have their own spatial and
cultural history. New roads are intended
to improve access for the emergency
services, access for commerce and es-
sential public services; new social facili-

ties and services are intended to make
residents re-evaluate their opinion of the
state and of themselves as citizens enti-
tled to equal treatment; and new com-
munity spaces are intended as a means
to diminish the domain of the drug traf-
fickers. These objectives are not, how-
ever, without their critics. For example
some residents worry that the new roads
and public spaces created by Favela
Bairro will not diminish the power of
drug traffickers and instead only serve
to increase police repression of innocent
residents by improving access to their
homes. Others raise the broader issue
of whether the spatial and physical
logic and symbols of the formal city
could or should be introduced into fave-
las, suggesting the need for favelas to
preserve their own distinctive identities
and cultures. Thus Favela Bairro raises
the question of how to integrate and up-
grade the favelas without destroying
those characteristics which have given
favelas their distinctive identity.
Public-private Partnerships in
Favela Bairro
Regarding evidence of partnerships in
Favela Bairro, the tight control exercised
by the SMH over the programme also
affects the involvement of private, non-
government and community actors in
the programme. At the project level, all
these actors are evident in the favelas,
with the private sector being especially
involved in project planning and con-
struction work, non-governmental organ-
isations being contracted by various mu-
nicipal departments to implement social
projects, and the community exerting
some influence over the direction of
projects. Nevertheless, at neither the
project or programme level can such in-
volvement be conceptualised as a part-
nership if that term is understood as
meaning joint decision-making, man-
agement, and risk taking. In terms of the
private and non-governmental sectors,
their involvement in Favela Bairro is
through contractual arrangements, with
each delivering a particular service in
return for a fee. The exception to this
was the initial involvement of the archi-
tectural practices in Favela Bairro, when
DISP 147
in 1994, an open competition was
launched to which architects could sub-
mit ideas and principles to serve as a
basis for the development of Favela
Bairro. This consultation process did
not, however, involve non-government
or community groups and once the prin-
ciples of the programme were estab-
lished, the further involvement of the ar-
chitects was through contract tenders for
individual upgrading projects.
In order to implement comprehensive
upgrading projects, the SMH needs
other government and non-government
actors to work at such a large scale.
Nevertheless, it cannot be said that this
pragmatism alone motivates the SMH to
work with other agencies, for it also re-
flects the broader Favela Bairro objec-
tive of city integration. Thus, partner-
ships in Favela Bairro are seen by the
SMH not only as a means to capture
much needed extra resources, but also
as a means to bring about social
change in the city. According to one of-
ficial, “Favela Bairro tries to establish
partnerships both with the public sector
as much as with NGO’s and private
companies because we have to involve
society as a whole in a proposal for the
development of social processes within
the favelas.” The ideal of establishing
partnerships, therefore, is motivated by
more than pragmatism, and when ex-
plaining the nature of the partnerships
thus far formed in Favela Bairro, it
should also be remembered that historic-
ally relations between NGO’s and the
government in Rio have been charac-
terised by mutual suspicion and lack of
trust, and regarding the private sector,
there is no strong tradition of philan-
thropy in the city.
Favela Bairro in the Context
of State Reform
Processes of institutional and legislative
reform, evidenced on paper in the city’s
Master Plan and Strategic Plan, have
made it possible for the SMH to imple-
ment an upgrading programme on
a scale never before seen in Rio (or
elsewhere in Brazil). The 1988 Federal
Constitution gave municipalities new
policymaking and fiscal powers, which
57 2001
have been particularly advantageous
for the larger urban municipalities, such
as Rio. In securing loans from the IDB,
the SMH was thus able to capitalise
upon the mood for urban reform and the
new legislative mechanisms in place to
integrate city planning. The two macro-
funções, established by the municipal
government, provide the most visible in-
stance of institutional reform to encour-
age multisectoral planning and policy-
making within the government, and to
some extent they have been effective.
The financial and political clout of
Favela Bairro has made it possible for
the SMH to persuade a wide range of
municipal actors to work with the pro-
gramme, some of which have become
its close allies, sharing the SMH’s vision
of the city and concern with the poor. In
addition, Favela Bairro has utilised the
legislative reforms regarding the status
of favelas, enabling them to be de-
clared “zones of special interest” and
therefore exempt from normal planning
regulations.
As such, it can be seen that the state
reforms since the late 1980’s have been
critical to both the development and im-
plementation of Favela Bairro, creating
an environment conducive to more inno-
vative planning. Similarly, the reforms
undertaken have enabled some syner-
gies to begin to emerge whereby multi-
sectoral approaches at both project and
policy levels have been possible, re-
sponding to the multiple facets of pov-
erty and exclusion in Rio, reinforcing the
need for greater involvement of private
sector enterprises and NGO’s and thus
also reinforcing the ability of Favela
Bairro to work at scale. This is not to say
that the regulatory and legislative frame-
works in Rio are entirely sympathetic to
the workings of Favela Bairro, for exam-
ple, rules governing tenders and con-
tracts stipulate that those firms who enter
with the lowest bid have to be granted
construction contracts, and this can later
prejudice the quality and quantity of the
work undertaken. There is, however, ev-
idence of some flexibility to experiment
with regards to land tenure regularisa-
tion, with special norms being devel-
oped to enable long-term rights of use to
be granted to favela residents, thereby

avoiding the complex and bureaucratic
procedures which govern the granting
of freehold titles.
Participation in Favela Bairro and
the Democratisation of the State
Perhaps the weakest area of state re-
form concerns the democratisation of
governance in Rio. Brazil as a whole
only returned to democratic government
in the mid-1980’s, and despite Brazil’s
impressive record of government decen-
tralisation, the state remains extremely
powerful and top-down in its approach
to government. In Favela Bairro this is
reflected throughout the programme,
both in its formulation (with no consulta-
tion with local NGO’s or community
groups and no research to capture resi-
dents’ perceptions of their problems and
their needs) and its implementation. At
the project level, residents are sched-
uled to have an initial input to their local
project during the project planning
stage through consultations with archi-
tects, and the final plans for a project
have also to be approved at a general
meeting of residents before upgrading
can go ahead. In reality, however, it
was reported that the interest of resi-
dents is generally only aroused once the
upgrading gets underway and directly
affects their lives. Instead it tends to be
the residents’ association of each favela
that dominates negotiations with archi-
tects, construction firms, supervisors and
the SMH, with the widely held percep-
tion that favela residents do not have the
capacity to understand the upgrading
plans as presented by the architects. As
a result, much of the involvement of resi-
dents in Favela Bairro concerns individ-
uals approaching their associations and
site supervisors to express their con-
cerns and wishes only once construction
is underway. This process is also facili-
tated by a number of residents who are
selected and trained by the SMH to act
as Housing Policy Agents, liaising be-
tween the SMH, site construction offices,
residents and the residents’ associations
during the construction phase, and also
educating favela residents on their
rights as “citizens”.
What Favela Bairro projects demon-
strate is both a limited and uneven ap-
DISP 147
proach to community participation, with
the latter being the product of different
architectural practices having different
approaches to involving the community.
The limited scope of, and importance at-
tached to, community participation is a
reflection of the utilitarian and prag-
matic objectives that initially motivated
the inclusion of mechanisms for partici-
pation in Favela Bairro. At the outset of
the programme, participation was for
the purposes of ensuring the co-opera-
tion of residents and thereby the suc-
cessful implementation of projects. Ac-
cording to one SMH official, “... partici-
pation in Favela Bairro was conceived
as a way to consolidate the projects
rather than an end in itself.” In time,
however, the purpose of participation
has shifted as the social policy team of
the SMH has gained credence and po-
litical strength. Now, according to the
Favela Bairro Manager, the aim of com-
munity participation is both “... to
change people’s behaviour, developing
citizenship ... [and] to ensure the sus-
tainability of the upgrading done by en-
couraging the community to maintain
it.” This shift away from the purely prag-
matic is reflected in new methods for
participation that were put in place in
1999, including dividing the favelas
into blocks, each with an elected repre-
sentative to attend thematic workshops
to raise residents’ needs and problems
before any project work gets underway.
Despite this shift toward a greater
awareness of the value community par-
ticipation can add to projects, all the ac-
tors in Favela Bairro (including the com-
munity) reveal some reluctance to ac-
cept the capacity of favela residents to
make strategic decisions that affect the
operation of the projects and the pro-
gramme as a whole. This has to be un-
derstood within the context of a consis-
tent undermining of community organi-
sations and their manipulation for politi-
cal ends over a period of decades,
thereby undermining community confi-
dence and capacity for organisation, as
well as residents’ trust in the state. Cru-
cial has also been the rising power of
the violent drug trade in Rio, which di-
rectly or indirectly infiltrates community
organisations, making favela residents’
58 2001
associations too powerful for the state to
ignore and yet, in many cases, repres-
sive, undemocratic and unrepresenta-
tive of their communities (see, for exam-
ple: Leeds, 1998; and Zaluar, 1998).
According to one of Rio’s NGO’s, for
example, “... the power of the drug traf-
fickers and the fear of the middle classes
have prevented the residents’ associa-
tions from becoming legitimate partici-
pants in policymaking.” Hence the re-
cent changes in the methodology for
participation also reflect a desire on the
part of the authorities to generate new
community organisations (block commit-
tees) which are not dominated by the
drug trade.
Given that attitudes in Rio’s municipal
government toward community partici-
pation remain dominated by suspicion
and scepticism, coupled with the prob-
lems and conflicts experienced on the
ground during the implementation of
Favela Bairro projects, it is unsurprising
that there is little popular pressure for
greater democratisation of government
in Rio. Institutional reforms within the
municipal government have not em-
braced the establishment of permanent
mechanisms for the sharing of power
with civil society. The strong culture of
authoritarianism in Rio, the infiltration of
favela residents’ associations by the
drug trade, and the political manipula-
tion and co-option of community organi-
sations, have not favoured the emer-
gence of any trend toward democratisa-
tion and the devolution of power to civil
society. According to one of Rio’s
NGO’s, the culture of authoritarianism
in Rio “… permeates all levels and all
groups of society, politicians, policy-
makers, technicians, intellectuals, and
the popular organisations and their
leaders.” Nevertheless, there is evi-
dence that Favela Bairro has spawned
some desire on the part of favela organ-
isations for greater decision-making
powers. Early on in the programme the
presidents of 16 residents’ associations
of favelas covered by Phase 1 of Favela
Bairro established an informal group
(Grupo de 16) to pressure the SMH into
considering problems of long-term main-
tenance of Favela Bairro infrastructure
and services. In time, however, and re-

flecting very clearly the problems sur-
rounding participation and democrati-
sation in Rio, the group has developed
increasingly close ties with the SMH and
has been criticised for undermining its
independence and critical powers.
Conclusions
In the context of Rio de Janeiro, where
100 years of government policy have
failed to rid the city of the inequality and
poverty manifest in its favelas, Favela
Bairro represents a considerable ad-
vance in approach. The programme is
based on a recognition of the impor-
tance of social and physical exclusion
and inequality in Rio, also targeting
some of its resources at particularly vul-
nerable groups. It reveals a strong com-
mitment to multisectoral projects as a
means to directly impact upon the lives
of the poor and their heterogeneous
needs, with much emphasis being
placed on public space, architecture
and design as vehicles for social inte-
gration. Perhaps most impressive of all,
it is being implemented at a huge scale
and is informed by a vision of an inte-
grated city where historic disparities be-
tween rich and poor are reduced.
The programme is, of course, marked
by a number of contradictions and prac-
tical problems. However, of particular
relevance to the international poverty
debate is Favela Bairro’s approach to
community participation. Participation,
as currently internationally advocated
and understood, should serve not only
to improve the operation of projects but
also empower the poor and act as a cat-
alyst for the democratisation of govern-
ment. In the case of Favela Bairro, the
complexities of fostering participation
even for the sole purpose of smoother
project operations are revealed. While
few cities possess squatter settlements so
uniformly dominated by drug traffickers
and associated violence as Rio, Favela
Bairro also reveals the difficulties of op-
erationalising the concept of participa-
tion in the context of widespread suspi-
cion and mistrust between civil society
and government, problems which are
not exclusive to Rio. The lack of commu-
nity participation in Favela Bairro per-
DISP 147
meates all aspects of the programme,
for example, undermining the ability of
projects to satisfy the demands of resi-
dents, undermining the efficacy and
speed of the construction work, and
threatening the prospects of long-term
maintenance of infrastructure and ser-
vices. Most serious, however, is the gap
it reveals between the Favela Bairro ob-
jectives of uniting an unequal city and
strengthening the citizenship of favela
residents, and the practice of failing to
give those same residents access to real
decision-making powers. Favela Bairro
will doubtless lead to real improvements
in the lives of favela residents, giving
them access to a wider range of ser-
vices and infrastructure than ever be-
fore. As it currently stands, however, the
programme misses the opportunity to
act as a catalyst for broader processes
of democratisation which are essential
not only to the implementation of suc-
cessful projects but also, and above all,
to ensure the continuity of the policy and
long-term sustainable and substantive
poverty reduction. The recent change in
the city administration will test the
strength of the social processes under-
pinning the programme.
Perhaps one of the very important
contributions of the Favela Bairro pro-
gramme – contradicting in some ways
its own name – has been to help to con-
solidate the perception that favelas are
a different but integral part of the city;
indeed, that they are neighbourhoods/
barrios, albeit in need of improvement.
Rather than extending the formal city
and its regulations into the irregular
spaces of “non-city”, the challenge for
large scale programmes such as Favela
Bairro is to contribute to the re-making
of the city as a whole and the re-design-
ing of its institutions. Rather than an in-
tegration which could be understood as
synonymous with homogenisation, the
challenge is to make a city of integrity
which is multiple, diverse and inclusive.
Here lies the great complexity of the
new generation of large scale upgrad-
ing programmes; here lies, as well, the
potential and the radical nature of their
ambition. An ambition which can only
be approached through the continuous
radicalisation of the processes of social
59 2001
participation and political democratisa-
tion.
Notes
The paper is based on the findings of a re-
search funded by the UK government’s De-
partment for International Development
(DFID), however, the views and opinions ex-
pressed here are those of the authors alone.
[1] During the research, undertaken in 1999-
2000, a total of 39 people were interviewed
in Rio, including staff of a range of municipal
departments and private sector companies,
community leaders and residents, architects
and planners, and NGO workers.
[2] Favela Bairro spends a maximum of US$
4,000 per household. The majority of these
costs (60 percent) are covered by the IDB,
with the remainder coming from municipal
sources. In addition, implementation of the
social projects are funded by the individual
municipal department concerned (sometimes
with backing from the federal government,
private foundations and suchlike), though
Favela Bairro resources pay for the construc-
tion of the buildings in which those services
are delivered. Similarly, for large undertak-
ings that occasionally form part of Favela
Bairro projects, such as channelling rivers,
resources may come from the budgets of
other departments and programmes. Backing
from private companies is also sought for
specific activities associated with individual
projects, and local (private or public) land
owners are encouraged to relinquish areas
for use by Favela Bairro with no compensa-
tion.
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