Realizing Favelas as a Sustainable Model via Insurgent Planning: Rethinking Our Assumptions in Sustainable Development

Virginia Tech

January 24, 2019

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Theresa Williamson, Ph.D.

Executive Director - Catalytic Communities

Editor - RioOnWatch

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Introducing 'Favela'

What's in a Name?

A Global Reality

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1. One in three people living in cities today lives in an informal settlement.
2. By 2050, nearly ⅓ of all humanity will live in an informal settlement.
3. Informal settlements are where human population growth is happening in our lifetimes.
4. 85% of all housing built worldwide is built 'illegally.' (McGuirk)
5. This makes residents of informal settlements the primary developers of urban space worldwide. (McGuirk)

Translations & What’s Implied

• Squatter settlement = Illegal
• Slum = Squalor, insalubrious conditions
• Shantytown = Precarious, makeshift housing
• Ghetto = Isolated, marginal

…. All imply they are or should be temporary

However, in Rio de Janeiro, there are approximately 1000 informal settlements, or favelas. They house 24% of the city's population. They range in size from 10s to 200,000 people. Most are over 50 years old.

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How did this happen?

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Ingredients in the Formation of Rio’s Favelas: late 1800s

Brazil

1. Abolition of slavery 1888
2. Worst land inequality in the world
3. Rapid early urbanization
4. No policy of affordable or adequate housing

Rio

• Largest city and federal capital
• World's largest slave port
• Central hillsides were public land marked for conservation, thus easy targets for squatting

'Favela Hill' Was Born

1. 1897 Former soldiers from Canudos war promised land in Rio, the capital, but arrived to find none.
2. Squatted next to Ministry of War awaiting land.
3. Permitted to squat on colonel’s hill in 1898.
4. Joined by freed slaves, European migrants.
5. Known as “Morro da Favela,” after a spiny plant where the original settlers served battle, gave all others their name.

120 Years of Neglect Repression

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• Cyclical policy of neglect and repression: "we only see the State through the barrel of a gun"
• Insufficient investment in education, health and sanitation (main priorities)
• Prior to Olympics, most marked period of evictions was in early 1900s and then during Military dictatorship (late 60s and 70s)
• No alternatives: poor quality public housing; no provisions for affordable housing
• Criminalization of poverty and race throughout history
• Economic stagnation in Rio from 1975 to 2005; again since 2013

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• 1988 federal Constitution recognized housing rights – adverse possession at 5 years
• By 1990s favela upgrading recognized as best solution with hundreds served by Favela-Bairro
• Early 2000s Bolsa Família federal welfare program instated, reducing poverty and inequality
• 2000 Affirmative action began in university admissions

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• 2009-2016 Olympic "state of exception" unraveled progress in housing rights and upgrading
• 2019 New federal administration plans to attack welfare and affirmative action policies

Introduction to Catalytic Communities

Supporting community-led and people-centered, sustainable urbanization

Our Mission

Catalytic Communities’ mission is to create models for effective integration between informal and formal settlements in cities across the globe, based on the experience of Rio de Janeiro.

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Catalytic Communities is dedicated to improving the quality of life for all Rio de Janeiro residents by driving a more creative, inclusive and empowering integration between the city’s informal and formal communities, in which the city’s favelas are recognized for their heritage status and their residents fully served as equal citizens. This is done through a combination of education, research, training, strategic communications, technology, networks, advocacy, and community planning.��

We envision CatComm with a 30-year life cycle leading to a precise goal, and split into four key phases:

Networking favelas with one another and broad networks of support, early technology access and training, peer-to-peer programs, establishing relationships and developing our organizational approach.

Documenting and communicating voices, values, assets and challenges of favelas, along with trends affecting them; growing nuance and broadening the debate, expanding our network to influential local and global opinion-leaders working to destigmatize favelas.

Developing tools, techniques, and models for the sustainable and asset-based community development (ABCD) of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and proving the value and potential of community-led participatory planning approaches.

Advocating and catalyzing a global model of urban integration promoting broad social equity and vibrant city life, based on the asset-based development of Rio’s favelas and other informal settlements and the concept of the ‘singular city.’

Organizational Life Cycle

Networking

2000-2008

Communication

(2009-2016)

Model Development

(2017-2024)

Global Advocacy

(2025-2030)

1

2

4

3

Present focus

…?

To realize an asset-based, community- controlled model to favela development, we have developed a three-fold strategy to:�

1. Fix the underlying narrative and deepen the conversation, growing nuance and understanding.
2. Expose, boost and grow creative community solutions for sustainable development.
3. Develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to safeguard community assets and guarantee security of tenure with community-led development.

3 Core Programs Today

Our vision is a creative, inclusive, and empowering community-led integration between Rio’s informal formal communities

CatComm's Current Programs as a Cycle

The successes of one program lay the groundwork for another. We believe our approach to sustainably developing informal communities is replicable around the world.

Shifting the Narrative

We believe favelas should be seen as part of the solution, not the problem.

Grassroots Organizing

We recognize and build out community-driven work on the ground to develop sustainable communities.

Preserving + Solidifying Community Assets

To maintain gains made through community action, we advocate for a legal framework in which community land tenure—the right to remain in the neighborhoods residents have built and rely on—can be enshrined.

(RE)Introducing 'Favela'

Refreshing our lens and taking a closer look

If Rio's favelas have been around for 120 years,

how should we define them?

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What do all of Rio's favelas have in common?

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What actually defines Rio's favelas?

1. Neighborhoods that develop out of an unmet need for affordable housing.
2. With no outside regulation.
3. Established by residents.
4. Evolving based on culture and access to resources, jobs, knowledge, the city.

They often start as 'squatters,' 'shanties,' 'shacks,' or 'slums,' but as they evolve they cease being characterized by these conditions. The original 'favela'' in Rio is 122 years old.

Favelas are...

Affordable Housing. Favelas are neighborhoods that emerge from an unmet need for shelter (hence at its essence their emergence is actually solving a problem, not creating one);

Informal. With no outside regulation (the origin of their originality—both the functionality and the dysfunction, since how this lack of regulation, or informality, will affect the community will depend on the factors listed below);

Self-built. Established by residents (through human, financial and emotional resources over generations, communities are built, with every brick, every tile holding a level of embedded history those of us in the ‘formal' city can rarely relate to); and

Unique. Evolving based on culture and access to resources, jobs, knowledge, and the city (the particular conditions that a favela finds itself in—low-lying or hilly, central or periphery, established in the 1920s or 1980s, near or distant from a particular industry, the personalities of its leaders, and infinite other attributes—come together to determine how it unfolds, moreso than formal areas given the unregulated and 'strong tie' nature of these communities).

Qualities of "favela style" development

1. Affordable housing in central areas
2. Living near work
3. Low-rise, high density
4. Mixed use
5. Pedestrian-centered
6. High use of bicycles & transit
7. Organic architecture
8. Collective action
9. Cultural incubators
10. High rate of entrepreneurship�

Sociocultural assets of favelas

• Incomparable generators and central producers of culture
• High degree of sociability / hyper-social environment
• High ‘play’ atmosphere for children
• Strong undeniable sense of community, particularly in comparison to formal neighborhoods including public housing
• High degree of collective action, or mutirão
• Intricate solidarity networks
• High degree and early adopters of social media
• Highly adaptive, talent for improvisation, or gambiarra
• Aesthetics
• Linguistic and musical production
• Breaking the media monopoly

Urbanistic & economic qualities of favelas

• Affordable housing in central areas, providing residences close to workplaces
• Low-rise, high density, mixed-use development
• Flexibility and organic architecture (architecture evolving based on need)
• Narrow streetscape favoring pedestrians and often engendering streets safe ‘leisure spaces’
• High use of bicycles and public transportation
• Creative and highly adaptive, cutting-edge use of technology
• Economies generated through mutual support
• High rate of entrepreneurship and growing upward mobility
• Improvisation of public services at times makes them more affordable than public provision

Logic of the 'informal city'

• Lack of regulation leads to increasing complexity
• Barriers can be removed through relationships
• Adaptive, iterative planning; urbanistic freedom
• Flexible architectural topologies adapted to territory
• Many necessary services demonetized and provided through mutual support / self-build (child care, water)
• "Logic of proximity;" strong solidarity networks, sense of community; high degree of collective action
• Creative responses to challenges; "hacks"
• Necessity and Market as coordinators
• Pure market logic: "Purest invisible hand" (at times more affordable; at others higher prices)
• ​

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Logic of the 'formal city'

• Regulation limits complexity
• Bureaucratic / financial barriers to entry
• Centralized or status-based master planning
• Pre-set architectural typologies
• Services and exchanges monetized
• "Logic of privacy;" individual interests dominate
• Fixes through formal means, high use of technology
• Market and State as coordinators
• Exchanges made through formal, regulated (and taxed) market logic

Two Different Ways of Life

Findings (2014)

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• The average wage in favelas has increased 54.7% in the last ten years, significantly more than the national average of 37.9%
• Favelas have more middle-class residents than Brazil as a whole: 65% compared to 54% nationally
• 94% of favela residents consider themselves happy (1% more than Brazilians on average)
• 81% of favela residents like favelas
• 66% wouldn’t leave their community
• 62% are proud to live there

'20% Rule'

At least 20% of the population of a typical city cannot afford market-rate housing.

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The private sector does not naturally meet this need. As a result, either government (through public housing, social rent, subsidies, etc.) or the civil society sector (through cooperatives or, in developing contexts, informal settlements) must meet the basic need of shelter.

Diagrams on complexity by David Krakauer of the Santa Fe Institute

Could it be that favelas are in the sweet spot???

Favelas and Insurgent Planning

Contrasting the response of favela residents to the realities of policies and neglect of policy-makers.

Insurgent Planning

Defined

"Radical planning practices [in the Global South] that respond to neoliberal specifics of dominance through inclusion."

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Guiding Principles

"Counter-hegemonic, transgressive and imaginative."

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Important Implications

"As post-welfare societies shrink the sphere of public responsibility, strengthening inequality and alienating the marginalized populations in the metropole, the insights to be gained from the standpoint of the global south have increasing relevance for radical planning in the era of global neoliberalsim."

• Faranak Miratab 2009

Insurgency

Insurgent planning

Sanitation "policy"

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Meanwhile...

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Waste management "policy"

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Meanwhile...

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Climate change "policy"

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Meanwhile...

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Sustainable transport "policy"

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Meanwhile...

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By integrating into a formal unsustainable system, we resolve the short-term access problem at the expense of community assets and long-term sustainability. And we are also locked into the formal system.

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Realizing Favelas as a Sustainable Model

Identifying community assets and building on them—while producing formalizing instruments that encode those assets—may be the way.

Typical International Development

• Focus on community deficiencies
• Problem response / Technical solutions
• Charity and 'favor' orientation
• 'Experts' provide solutions in one-way exchange
• Grants to agencies/government/overseer
• Services needed determined outside community
• High emphasis on government role
• People as beneficiaries
• Aim is to 'fix' people
• Root concern is developing territories /↓ risk
• Programs as the answer
• Main concern at project conclusion: maintenance

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)

• Focus on community assets
• Opportunity identification / Assets are a springboard
• Investment and rights orientation
• Solutions devised in mutual exchange w/ technical ally
• Grants, investments, volunteer support to associations
• Services needed determined inside community
• High emphasis on community role
• People as citizens, co-creators, in control
• Aim is to develop potential in people
• Root concern is developing people / ↑ potential
• People as the answer
• Main concern at project conclusion: What's next?

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Traditional vs. Asset-Based Development

To preserve the qualities communities have developed over time, including the way of life that they value, community control over their own development is key.

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This is especially true in historically self-built neighborhoods.

The consolidated favelas that have been most successful in their development are those that took advantage of the flexibility that comes with informality to self-organize and implement their own 'tactical' insurgent improvements, while also pursuing public investments.

Concluding Thoughts

What If?

What If?

What would Rio be like if it embraced the unique history of each of the city’s favelas, recognized their contribution, and supported their future development in ways that honored resident knowledge and history?

What If?

What could Rio’s favelas be like with investment, justice and creativity?�

What If?

...Rio set an example for the world? A new type of community-led integration rooted in community assets and benefitting from the qualities of informality?

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Leadership that’s needed as UN projections put nearly 1/3 of humanity in informal settlements by 2050.�

Next Up for CatComm | RioOnWatch

• RioOnWatch focusing on popular urbanism bringing community solutions, voices and innovations from and to Rio's favelas.
• Sustainable Favela Network exchanges, training and project development. Sustainable Favela Indicator piloted.
• Favela Community Land Trust workshops, working towards a pilot and legislation.
• Municipal policy monitoring and advocacy for favela-led planning.
• International solidarity network to #StandWithFavelas.

Get Involved

• Stay informed and speak up. Decision-makers in Brazil care about US public opinion.
• Apply for a volunteer 3-month internship with us in Rio.
• Volunteer virtually and share your graphic design, mapping, translation, or social media skills.
• Share new technologies and organizing strategies that can serve our community partners.
• Tell us about policies and strategies that have worked in your city that can be useful to Rio.
• Research assets before studying challenges. This applies to projects aimed at improving anyone or any community.
• Join our international solidarity network and #StandWithFavelas at bit.ly/StandWithFavelas

Realizing Favelas as a Sustainable Model via Insurgent Planning: Rethinking Our Assumptions in Sustainable Development

Virginia Tech

January 24, 2019

​

Theresa Williamson, Ph.D.

Executive Director - Catalytic Communities

Editor - RioOnWatch

​

Email: theresa@catcomm.org

Talk Slides: bit.ly/VTfavelatalk

Newsletter: bit.ly/CatCommSignUp

Twitter: @RioOnWatch | @CatComm

Facebook: /RioOnWatch | /CatComm

Instagram: /RioOnWatch

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