DEPARTMENT OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING, UC BERKELEY

From Slums to Neighborhoods?Favela Upgrading in Rio de Janeiro

�Morar Carioca, as it is written on paper, is an urban planner's dream forfavelas. [...] This would have been a real legacy.�

(Theresa Williamson, 2014)

Babylon Associates

(Yiyan Ge, Drew Levitt, Alana MacWhorter, Angela Ross, Maita Schade, Paul Sohn)

December 9, 2014

INTRODUCTION

For as long as there have been cities, there have been informal urban settlements. Because theseinformal settlements, often called slums, or favelas in Brazil, typically have limited access tomunicipal infrastructure or services, the quality and stability of slum dwellers’ lives are oftenfar below that enjoyed by residents of the formal city. Both for humanitarian and for aestheticreasons, many actors – politicians, city planners, architects, and others – have attempted toaddress the challenges posed by informal settlements, with varying degrees of success. Untilthe past several decades, the primary approach to slum upgrading has been the displacementof a slum’s residents to more formal residences elsewhere, followed by the demolition andredevelopment of the original slum. However, this method ignores the complex and criticalsocial support systems that exist in all communities, formal or informal. As the human cost ofdisplacement-based slum clearance has become clearer, and as social upheaval has empoweredpreviously disenfranchised populations with a greater measure of agency over their futures, thedisplacement strategy has become less and less acceptable.

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In Brazil, the scale of informal settlement is enormous: more than 11 million Brazilians live infavelas, [19] and more than 20 percent of the citizens of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second-largestcity, are favela dwellers. Over the past half century, Brazil, and Rio de Janeiro in particular, havegrappled with multiple approaches to slum upgrading, gradually adopting a more nuancedapproach that seeks to improve informal communities in place by providing infrastructure andservices. In Rio, this trajectory has culminated in the dual programs of Favela-Bairro and MorarCarioca, two programs of unprecedented scale and ambition that have sought to integrate Rio’smany hundreds of favelas into the city’s formal urban fabric. The story of Favela-Bairro andMorar Carioca is a story of good intentions and enormous civic initiative, but also a story ofoverambitious promises, unrealistic timetables, and the abandonment of civic engagement inthe face of international pressure. Both programs promised to achieve social as well as physicalintegration through a profoundly participatory planning approach. But rather than serve as amodel for other efforts to address urban informality, Favela-Bairro and Morar Carioca stand as awarning, and a sobering reminder that community-oriented slum improvement is a long, slowprocess that cannot be addressed solely through infrastructure improvements, and must unfoldover a realistic timeline unfettered by external pressures.

1 BACKGROUND

1.1 RIO DE JANEIRO AND ITS FAVELAS

Rio de Janeiro, founded in 1565, is now the second largest city in Brazil, with a core urbanpopulation of 6.4 million. In addition to its sheer size, Rio was also until 1960 the federal capitalof Brazil, helping to make it a nationwide hub and an international icon of its country. Rio isalso home to many hundreds of favelas, or informal settlements. As can be seen in the imagein 1.1, many of these settlements exist dispersed throughout the entire city. Based on the 2010census [18], 22% of Rio’s population lived in favelas by that time, up from around 18% in 2000,making favelas a widespread and growing component of Rio’s urban fabric.

At the end of the 19th century, urban growth and concentration of jobs and other opportunitiesin the center relegated many low-income citizens to the periphery and to informal settlements.In the case of Rio, the first documented informal settlement that came to bear the moniker“favela” was a settlement at Morro do Castelo composed of around 20,000 veterans from a warin the north-east of the country. These soldiers arrived to the Rio area and found themselveshomeless without any support from the authorities, establishing their quarters on the Castelohill around 1897 without ever obtaining formal titles to the land. This marked the foundationof a parallel society disconnected from the formal government of the city, and the beginning ofa history alternating between tension and disengagement between City Hall and a significantportion of its citizens. [33]

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Figure 1.1: A map illustrating favela locations in Rio in relation to Olympic games sites.

1.2 HISTORY OF SLUM DISPLACEMENT AND UPGRADING

Urban growth and rapid nationwide urbanization led to many more favelas forming throughoutthe city, and soon the unregulated conditions in these areas made them vulnerable to fires andfloods. Moreover, the disconnect from formal authority meant fertile ground for parallel powerstructures taking hold and organized crime becoming the de-facto government [36].

EVICTIONS, REMOVALS, AND INVOLVEMENT OF THIRD-PARTY ORGANIZATIONS

This created a need for the city to act. Defining the favelas as “aberrations,” the city’s 1937building code charted a roadmap for removals and evictions in the decades to follow. Manyfavelas’ residents were forcibly moved to so-called “proletariat parks,” camps intended to betemporary residences with strict rules and curfews for the residents. At the same time as thecity settled into this policy of slum eradication, other organizations recognized the potential ofengaging in social work within the favelas. During the 1940s, the Catholic Church, concernedabout the rise of communism and other undesirable ideologies in the working class, began toengage in social programs and even public housing projects in the favelas. One telling slogan fromthis time was a call to “climb up the hill before the Communists come down” – an indication of theagenda these programs were designed to advance. [26] The rise of working-class political ideas, asdemonstrated by the Brazilian Communist Party garnering 25% of the vote in Rio’s 1947 municipalelections, may also have contributed to an increase in organization amongst the residents ofthe favelas themselves. By the mid-1950s, as favelas continued to grow and densify, the need

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for basic utilities was driving residents to City Hall to protest their neighborhoods’ neglect. Thismovement resulted in the formation of the first favela neighborhood associations. [16]

BUDDING RESIDENT INVOLVEMENT AND FEDERAL BACKLASH

These residents’ organizations became progressively more formalized and by 1963 formed astate-wide association of favela residents, the Federação das Associações das Favelas do Estadodo Rio de Janeiro (FAFERJ). The government of the State of Rio de Janeiro, headed by newlyelected governor Carlos Lacerda, was eager to try new approaches to the favela problem, andtasked sociologist José Arthur Rios with coordinating gubernatorial assistance. Material andsocial assistance to the favelas for the first time became unlinked from religious organizationsand put under the supervision of residents and the state. Rios, together with FAFERJ, createdthe program “Operação Mutirão,” which roughly translates to “Operation Joint Effort.” UnderOperação Mutirão, community centers, medical stations, and schools in the favelas were to bebuilt and improved with state funding and labor recruited amongst the residents, paid at a fairwage. [22]

Unfortunately, the nationwide political climate changed drastically with the takeover of thefederal government by a military dictatorship in 1964 [34], which resulted in “the end of anyattempt [...] to include nonelite groups in the decision-making process” [16]. This resulted inOperação Mutirão being shut down after only 1.5 years, and before any noteworthy results couldbe accomplished. Power over the fate of the favelas was escalated to the federal level with thecreation of the Coordenadoria de Habitação de Interesse Social da Área Metropolitana do Rio deJaneiro (CHISAM), the Coordinating Body of Housing in the Social Interest of the Rio de JaneiroMetropolitan Area, an agency designed chiefly to facilitate favela eradication. Under this pushfrom above, all levels of government returned to evicting and moving people from the favelasinto “conjuntos,” or subsidized housing projects, by the end of the 1960s (see also figures 1.2 and1.3). These conjuntos, for the most part built on cheap land at the periphery without access tothe rest of the city and often lacking basic infrastructure, quickly deteriorated to circumstancessimilar to those in the communities they had been designed to replace. [26] One example of a1960s conjunto is the Cidade de Deus, namesake to a popular 2002 film illustrating the life andpower structures in these settlements. [23]

FAILURE OF CHISAM AND ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTICIPATORY PROCESSES

Beyond the issues of insufficient infrastructure and organized crime they had inherited fromthe earlier favelas, the new conjuntos were also costly to build and maintain and could not keepup with the urban growth of Rio de Janeiro catalyzed by its economic growth in the early 1970s.For all these reasons, the systematic removal of favelas was “abandoned as a policy failure” [16]by 1974. While participation efforts of the residents associations continued to be stifled bythe authoritarian government, international pressures in favor of in-place slum upgrading alsomounted: throughout the decade, the World Bank continued lobbying the Brazilian NationalHousing Bank for on-site upgrades, although with limited success. In 1979 the federal government

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Figure 1.2: A favela at Praia do Pinto 1965, demolished and replaced by a conjunto.

Figure 1.3: Vila Kennedy, an example of a conjunto built in the 1960s to house residents evictedfrom the favela at Morro do Pasmado, as described in [15].

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took their first gingerly tentative steps in the direction of in-place development by establishing theprogram Promorar, which gave land titles to some of the residents in six communities throughoutthe city. [14]

The tides of the political arena were slowly turning in favor of citizen involvement again.After the appointment of a new mayor in 1982 the municipal government, trying to appease anever-growing population of disenfranchised favela dwellers, followed suit with Promorar andpartnered with FAFERJ to establish “Projeto Mutirão.” This program was reminiscent of the effortson Operação Mutirão twenty years earlier and achieved structural improvements with fairly paidresident labor in 17 of Rio’s favelas. [26], [27]

The same political changes that enabled these moves towards participatory slum upgradingalso led to Brazil’s first democratic elections in more than 20 years in 1985, and made participatoryprocesses a political necessity for elected officials throughout the nation – for instance, theMayor of Rio de Janeiro, no longer chosen by appointment, was now accountable to newlyreenfranchised favela residents. [34] FAFERJ and more generally the residents of favelas in Rio,relieved of repression by the military dictatorship, began making their voices heard more clearly.The effects of this new empowerment were marked by two events in 1992. The first of these wasthe announcement of Rio de Janeiro’s ten-year master plan, which explicitly stated the goal of“integrating favelas into the formal city.” [27] The second was the near-triumph of Benedita daSilva, a black woman from the favelas, in the mayoral election. [7] This unusual mayoral race puttremendous pressure on the ultimate winner of the elections, Cesar Maia, to address the needs ofthe favela residents in a more explicit way. After nearly 100 years of interference at the hands ofall levels of government and non-governmental organizations, the large contingent (now over15% of the city) living in informal settlements could finally hope to take an active role in shapingtheir communities.

2 RECENT UPGRADING PROGRAMS: HISTORICAL FACTS

2.1 FAVELA BAIRRO

ORIGINS AND STAKEHOLDERS On the stage thus set by the events of 1992, a profound programfor reaching the goals of the master-plan through participatory planning was realized with theannouncement of Favela-Bairro (“Favela-to-Neighborhood”) in 1994. Favela-Bairro was slatedto be at the forefront of in-situ slum upgrading and urbanization initiatives via infrastructuralupgrades, expanded social services, and real estate regularization during a two-phase timeline. [4]The scope of the program was novel in its focus on public spaces and community participationinstead of the traditional emphasis on private home creation, causing it to become known as“a housing program that is not about housing.” [17] Major funding was provided by the Inter-American Development Bank in two installments of US $180M and matched with US $120M bythe city government. Favela-Bairro would be coordinated by the newly established MunicipalHousing Secretariat Secretária Municipal de Habitação as well as the municipal trash-collectioncompany COMLURB, and state water company CEDAE.

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Figure 2.1: An access stairwell is converted into a garden/public space area in one of the manylandscape strategies of the Favela-Bairro Program.

PHASE I During the first phase of the program, the Housing Secretariat and the BrazilianInstitute of Architects (IAB) organized a design competition to arrive at a methodology fordeveloping improvements to 18 favelas. The primary target were communities of medium size(between 500 and 2,500 dwellings), because they comprised 40% of the city’s favela residentsand were therefore deemed the appropriate first beneficiaries of the favela integration. [25] Animportant innovation was the organization of 15 teams of architects who for the first time took ondesign for the poorest segments of Rio’s population through novel methodological approachesand collaborative design processes. Jorge Mario Jauregui Architects positioned themselvesat the forefront of Favela-Bairro’s urban design, with initiatives including the construction ofcommunity centers offering recreational activities and job training, daycare facilities, communalkitchens, and new streets and pedestrian walkways. Jaregui believed that the “projects facilitatemovement within the favelas, create links to the city center, address health and environmentalconcerns, and taken collectively, improve the sociological and economic status of the favelas”. [17]By the culmination of phase I, 38 medium-size favelas had received upgrades to streets, seweragesystems and electricity provision.

PHASE II The second phase of Favela-Bairro, from 2000–2005, began during Mayor Luiz PauloConde’s administration (1997–2001) and continued into César Maia’s second term (2001–2005),urbanizing 62 more favelas and 24 informal subdivisions. [27] The scope of upgrading in thesecond phase of the program expanded beyond infrastructure to include more social facilitiesand programs, such as child care centers, computer centers, training in hygiene and communitydevelopment, and some land titling, thereby building on the lead architects’ original planningdesign intentions.

The Favela-Bairro program lasted from 1994–2008 and still stands as the largest slum upgradingprogram implemented in Latin America to date, affecting over 450,000 people in 105 favelasthroughout Rio de Janeiro. [4] [17] The program exemplifies the trajectory of on-site upgradingbecoming the consensus government policy toward favelas through the 1990s and 2000s, but itsevaluation requires consideration not only of its intentions, but also their implementation. “Iwould hope that construction for a favela upgrading program would occur with the same quality

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Figure 2.2: Jorge Mario Jauregui Architects transformed a dilapidated basin into a activatedrecreational facility for the community.

Figure 2.3: Connectivity and safety within the favelas were addressed through large scale inter-ventions bolstering public space and infrastructural upgrades.

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of materials, and with the same urgency of timeline,” said a favela resident of Acari, “as a publicwork in another part of the city.” [27] Unfortunately, a lack of funding for projects from 2005to 2008 seemed to stifle this ideal, and by the late 2000s many contractors abandoned projectsbecause of difficult working conditions.This incomplete accomplishment of Favela-Bairro’s loftygoals necessitated follow-up programs and new sources of funding, soon to arrive in the form ofMorar Carioca.. [27]

2.2 MORAR CARIOCA: DOUBLING DOWN

The Morar Carioca program (translated roughly as “Rio Living”; “carioca” is the demonym ofRio de Janeiro) was announced by Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes in July 2010 and presented as thenecessary and logical successor to Favela-Bairro. Positioned as part of the “social legacy” of the2016 Olympics, Morar Carioca has the stated goal to “urbanize all of Rio’s favelas by 2020.” [9]Because Morar Carioca is slated to continue in phases until 2020, it is very much a work inprogress whose final outcomes remain to be seen. However, we will review its history and itsshape as of late 2014.

Morar Carioca promised “holistic urban planning, re-zoning, infrastructure upgrading, hous-ing improvements, regularization of land tenure, City services extensions, and concentratedmonitoring” in the service of the goal of integrating all the city’s favelas into the formal urbanfabric. [39] Through Morar Carioca, favela communities are intended either to receive upgradesin place, or, if they are deemed to be “at risk or inappropriate for residential use,” to be relo-cated into settlements built through the Minha Casa, Minha Vida (“My House, My Life”) housingconstruction program. [35] Social components of Morar Carioca include “programs to reduceviolence, drug use and improve job prospects, particularly for the most vulnerable families andyoung people. The project will support the regularization and control of urban development inthe favelas, including property regularization and the prevention of community expansion.” [20]

From the beginning of the program, it was apparent that in contrast to Favela-Bairro, for whicha majority of funds came from international partners (primarily the Inter-American DevelopmentBank), the costs of Morar Carioca would be shouldered primarily by the City of Rio de Janeiro.While Mayor Paes emerged from a November 2010 meeting with the Inter-American DevelopmentBank expressing hope that IDB would contribute “300 million reais a year for a period of tenyears,” [40] his optimism resulted instead in a $150 million USD (approximately 250 million reais)loan from IDB the next month. As of 2014, this low-interest loan represents the sole internationalcontribution to the planned Morar Carioca budget.

Morar Carioca arrived with a good deal of momentum and energy. Following Mayor Paes’announcement of the program in the summer of 2010, planning activities began with a high-profile design competition held in October 2010 by the Rio chapter of the Institute of Architectsof Brazil (IAB-RJ), a core partner in Morar Carioca. Eighty-nine firms submitted sample designsfor favela upgrading; forty firms were selected to produce neighborhood-specific upgradingplans. [29] In January 2011, both Mayor Paes and Municipal Housing Secretary Jorge Bittaraffirmed an aggressive time-table of interventions, with Paes committing to provide new housingnear geologically unsafe dwellings slated for removal from the Morro da Providência within “a

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year and a half,” [6] and Bittar promising swift implementation of the forty winning firms’ designsin 216 favelas near Olympic sites, to be completed before the 2014 World Cup. [5]

In January 2011, the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Housing Secretariat (SMH), the coordinatingagency for Morar Carioca, announced an enormous planned budget for the program: 8.5 billionreais over nine years. At the time of this announcement, this sum was equal to roughly $5 billionUSD, but the exchange rate has since declined and the total budget now equals about $3.5 billionUSD. The initial plan included three “cycles,” each growing in budget and impact. The first phase,covering the years 2011–2013, was to entail the expenditure of 2.1 billion reais and benefit 70,000families. Phase two (2014–2016) called for 2.65 billion reais for interventions on behalf of 86,000households; the final cycle covered 2017–2020 with 3.75 billion reais designed to impact 109,000households. [35]

However, this flurry of activity also contained the first indications of disorganization: in thesame month as SMH’s budget announcement, Municipal Housing Secretary Bittar referred to the216 favela upgrades planned for 2011–2014 as “phase two” of Morar Carioca, contradicting hisorganization’s plan for phase two to unfold from 2014 to 2016. Bittar also described the financingfor Morar Carioca as “being negotiated with the Inter-American Development Bank and thefederal government,” but no additional money was forthcoming from IDB. [5]

After the initial fanfare surrounding the program’s launch, there was little tangible progress.Problems with the awarding of contracts, as well as a shortage of funds, contributed to extensivedelays on Morar Carioca’s implementation. [24] By mid-2012, only ten architecture firms hadreceived resources and authorization to begin designing favela upgrades, and no official programhad been established. [29] In May 2013, none of the Morar Carioca Phase I communities hadreceived finalized construction plans; [30] as late as October 2013, most of the original fortyarchitecture firms selected by IAB-RJ were still awaiting funding and activation. [24]

Mayor Paes who officially established Morar Carioca, also called the Municipal Plan for theIntegration of Informal Settlements, through Decree No. 36,388, issued in October 2012. Thelegislation includes an appendix of more than 800 favelas specified to receive upgrades by2020. [31] The decree, and the surrounding discussion of Morar Carioca, played a major role inPaes’ successful reelection campaign during fall 2012. Paes particularly highlighted the ostensiblyparticipatory focus of the program: the enacting decree referred to the “participation of organizedsociety. . . in all stages of Morar Carioca through assemblies and meetings in the communities”and the “presentation of works and debates open to the participation of civil society and citizens.”[31]

Morar Carioca initially placed substantial emphasis on resident engagement and public par-ticipation, contracting in 2012 with the NGO iBase (Brazilian Institute of Social and EconomicAnalysis) to provide “social diagnosis” through focus groups, household surveying, and docu-mentary filmmaking. Barreira do Vasco, a community of 20,000 residents and 100 businessesin the São Cristóvão neighborhood, was one of the earliest favelas to receive upgrades throughMorar Carioca. The planning process in Barreira do Vasco involved “community meetings witharchitects and extensive participatory diagnosis” from iBase. [10] Although the timeframe fordelivery of improvements was delayed from the projected date of May 2013, construction ofinfrastructure projects as requested by the favela’s residents commenced in July 2014. [3] How-

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ever, Barreira do Vasco has proven to be the exception, rather than the rule: iBase’s contract wasabruptly terminated in January 2013, since which time no formal, sanctioned process for publicparticipation has existed within Morar Carioca. [29]

Since 2013, it has become difficult to clearly identify which projects, if any, are part of MorarCarioca, as opposed to other local or federal slum-upgrading programs. The Morar Carioca labelhas been used for some pre-existingpreexisting projects, such as upgrades scheduled throughthe federal Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) for the communities of Colônia Juliano Moreira,Mangueira, Manguinhos, and Guarabu. [21] Meanwhile, with continued funding for MorarCarioca already looking uncertain (as early as July 2013, Mayor Paes was citing a shortage offunds as a reason for the slow rollout of the program [32]), “several firms have been told to takedown plaques claiming Morar Carioca is present in their communities.” [38]

OLYMPIC PRESSURES Morar Carioca has unfolded in the new context of the federal GrowthAcceleration Program (PAC), which took over many slum upgrading efforts as Favela-Bairro drewto a close. PAC has tended to focus on highly visible projects, including a cable car system inthe Complexo do Alemão and a large concrete bridge, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, adjacent toRocinha. [29] The precedent of supporting attention-seeking interventions without extensivepublic participation has had a strong impact on Morar Carioca.

Adding to this precedent is the enormous international pressure on Rio to deliver visible signsof progress in the runup to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Brazil secured the WorldCup in October 2007, and Rio won the competition to host the 2016 Olympics in October 2009,becoming the first city in South America to host the Olympic Games. With its dual goals oflarge-scale physical upgrading, including “public works to improve water and sewerage services,drainage systems, road surfacing, street lighting, the provision of green areas, sports fields,recreational areas, and the construction and equipping of social service centers,” [20] as wellas social interventions including land titling regularization and the provision of education andhealth and community centers in favelas, Morar Carioca was presented as a key component ofthe “social legacy” of the Olympics. However, community-oriented slum improvement is a longand slow process that must proceed at the pace of often disorganized and chaotic local citizengroups, making it a poor match for large, highly organized, international public events such asthe Olympics. As of 2014, only fragmented versions of Morar Carioca are still underway.

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3 ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION

3.1 FAVELA-BAIRRO

We have the benefit of hindsight in looking at the impacts of Favela-Bairro on the residents theprogram aimed to serve. There are a handful of existing evaluations of the program; for thepurposes of this paper, we look specifically at two academic studies commissioned by Inter-American Development Bank to assess the effectiveness of the Favela-Bairro program. There isone study for each phase of the program, published in 2005 and 2008 respectively: Soares andSoares (2005) evaluates Phase I of the program, and IDB’s Development Effectiveness Overview2010 describes evaluations of Phase II, including Borba 2008.

PHASE I Soares and Soares (2005) evaluate Favela-Bairro Phase I against the intended outputsand outcomes listed in the official logical framework of the program, as well as other possibleeffects. In lieu of a true experimental design, Soares and Soares ex post facto build a quasi-experimental comparison group using a range of available data, such as the Population Censusand Low-Income Community Survey. They also build a counterfactual scenario – what wouldhave happened in the targeted favelas in the absence of Favela-Bairro – and compare observedeffects to that counterfactual. The authors note, though, that “beyond expansion of publicservices, one is severely limited regarding [attempts to determine the] impact of Favela-Bairro onkey development outcomes.”

They conclude that Favela-Bairro Phase I had a measurable impact on certain outputs. Soaresand Soares report a “substantial increase in the coverage of water and rubbish collection infavelas that outpaced the comparison groups identified” [37]. The impact on sewerage waseven more significant, because the poorest residents benefitted to a greater extent from thisimprovement than did more affluent residents.

In terms of outcomes, however – the question of whether this program significantly improvedthe quality of life of residents – positive evidence is less apparent. Health outcomes of residentsand property values saw no increase, and favela property values in fact declined compared tothe rest of the city. The authors also note that “the program was [not] able to generate anyreal economy impacts” [37]. In conclusion, the authors remind us that when looking at rawnumbers about improvement related to Favela-Bairro, there seem to be widespread impacts. It isin comparison to a robust counterfactual, such as the authors use, that the program’s results canbe fairly assessed.

PHASE II IDB’s Development Effectiveness Overview 2010 describes the evaluation of Favela-Bairro Phase II. First, the evaluation finds continuing improvements to many services, includingwater, sewerage, street lighting, and other urban improvements [20]. There are some exceptions.Despite an uptick in favela connections to the city water system, access to piped water did notimprove as a result of the program – IDB attributes this to favela residents’ pre-existing access toother water sources.

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Land titling was a major focus of Favela-Bairro Phase II, but the IDB evaluation finds only an“economically insignificant” impact on formal titles (known as “escrituras”) [20]; there was only athree percent increase in the incidence of formal ownership in the affected favelas, comparedto the control group. However, the study notes that despite the lack of increase in formal landtitling, there was an increase in informal documentation of ownership, such as bills of sale. Therewas a 13 percent increase in these informal titles, and IDB sees this change as consistent withthe “hypothesis that improvements in neighborhood amenities increase demand for certainty oftenure, and given the bureaucratic and legal constraints to obtaining formal titles, residents lookfor alternative methods of proof of residency and proof of ownership” [20].

There is lack of progress on other indicators of integration into the formal city as well. Byimproving community infrastructure, the program also aimed to increase access to public trans-portation, and ultimately to promote participation in activities, including leisure, shopping andreligious activities, outside favelas. However, no impact on either of these intended effects wasfound in Favela-Bairro Phase II [20].

Finally, there were a few additional benefits found. While there was no increase in employmentamong favela residents, there was an increase in median household income. There was a smallbut significant impact on school attendance. And favela residents’ perceptions of the value oftheir homes, as well as the quality of life in their communities, improved [20].

OUTPUTS AND OUTCOMES In both phases, there is clear progress on certain outputs, especiallyin terms of basic services. The program’s outcomes are less clear. Phase I failed to providemeasurable increases in health and wealth. Phase II saw increases in informal land titling, schoolattendance, and household income, but no evidence of real progress on formal property titles or,perhaps more importantly, activity patterns changing toward more integration into the formalcity. Residents believe, however, that their communities have improved.

CASE STUDY: FAVELA DOIS DE MAIO

Located in “Engenho Novo,” or the North Zone, Favela Dois de Maio received upgrades throughthe second phase of Favela-Bairro between 2002 and 2005. Dois de Maio, which translates to theSecond of May, received water and sewerage improvements, the widening, paving, and lightingof streets, as well as the construction of a housing and leisure complex. According to the Braziliangovernment’s reports, the complex included 180 housing units built five stories high and affecting632 families. /citeFavela-Bairro Upgrades also included the channeling of the Jacaré River, whichruns adjacent to the community. The Municipal Housing Agency’s website highlights Dois deMaio in an overview of Favela-Bairro, which praises its selection as one of the world’s best projectsat the 2000 Expo in Germany. [1]

Recently, however, Rio on Watch reported that these upgrades have fallen into disrepair. [8]Despite sewage upgrades and trash collection, open air sewage and garbage is a near daily sightin Dois de Maio. In addition, the plaza constructed for community events is now being used as aPacifying Police Unit (UPP) post. Though in name these police forces seek to maintain peace andsafety within the favelas, others have argued that they are symbols of the state’s militarization.

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Vera Malaguti Batista, researcher and General Secretary of the Rio Institute of Criminology,claimed that the UPP’s strategy of “occupation” is modeled after American strategies used in theMiddle East and symbolizes the government’s view of favelas as “territory to be conquered.” [41]Resident sentiment has turned cynical as the upgrades have aged. The president of the Resident’sAssociation of Dois de Maio said, as quoted in a Rio on Watch article, “After Favela-Bairro, webegan to be called a ‘community’ as a result of the structural improvements we received. Now wehave regressed to the eighties, when we were seen as a ‘favela.’ If we remain as we are today, fiveyears down the line we will be one of the ugliest favelas in Rio.” [8]

These claims were not isolated, however. Several articles and evaluations focus on the poorquality of materials used in the upgrades of multiple favelas and the fact that many timesmaintenance became the responsibility of residents themselves. These stories suggest thatinformal upgrading must also include plans and budgeting for the continued maintenance ofinfrastructure to ensure that initial investments see a long-term return.

3.2 MORAR CARIOCA

Unlike Favela-Bairro, Morar Carioca is an ongoing project, so we cannot fully evaluate its impactsas of yet. We can, however, observe how the program has been implemented thus far. There isearly evidence to suggest that the vision of Morar Carioca as “an urban planner’s dream” is notcoming to fruition due to crucial changes to the implementation process, an expedited scheduledue to the Olympics in 2016, and inconsistency regarding the program’s “brand.”

NOT JUST ABOUT THE BUDGET The mayor cited a lack of resources for the Morar Carioca programin less than two years after it was initiated [38]. Such evidence immediately casts doubt on theprogram’s planning and implementation. However, since little information is available to us inEnglish regarding the program’s financial status, it is hard to determine the nature of this shortageof resources. Nonetheless, there is evidence suggesting that the financial failure can be partlyexplained by the incompatibility between the program’s budget and its scale. However, instead ofarguing that the budget is too small for the program, we believe that the issue lies more with theprogram itself.

Morar Carioca’s budget amounts to approximately $3.5 billion USD, which is more than 7 timeslarger than that of the Favela-Bairro program. Yet, resources are still falling short. In our view,one major reason is that the program is far too extensive in terms of both geographical scale andobjectives, given the time frame. The point is best illustrated by the program’s main objectivestatement, “to promote social inclusion through complete and definite urban and social integra-tion of all favelas by 2020” [13]. The Morar Carioca program intends to urbanize all of the favelasin Rio, which now amounts to more than 800 informal settlements accommodating around20% of Rio’s population. Besides the unprecedented scale, the planned integration approachrequires an unusually large amount of effort and coordination. What makes the program evenmore ambitious and unattainable is the very short time frame. To put the program in context:Favela-Bairro took 14 years to make improvements to just over 100 informal settlements, whereasthe Morar Carioca program is set to upgrade more than 800 settlements with respect to both

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social and infrastructural aspects in only eight years. Given the ambitious scale of the project, webelieve that whether the program has enough resources is beside the point. The real questionis whether a program with such an unprecedented scale can be achieved in such a short timeframe, even if given enough money. The following sections continue to explore other factorsthat contribute to the dismantling of the program, and will demonstrate that the program’s goalsrequire care, patience, and will, which demand more than just a gigantic budget.

ABANDONMENT OF PARTICIPATORY METHODOLOGY Perceived as the third phase of the Favela-Bairro program, Morar Carioca’s mission is to improve the participatory involvement of slumupgrading programs. However, the evidence suggests that the city government is not resolute ininvolving communities in the planning process. Even though there were some efforts in engagingcommunities in the beginning of the program, the program’s participatory methodology sufferedsignificantly as the program progressed, the budget shrank, and external pressures mounted.

As mentioned before, iBase was the primary implementer of the participatory methodologycontracted by the city government. They were responsible for the “participatory social diagnos-tic,” helping to document the planning process, and learning the needs and desires of targetedcommunities [30]. For example, iBase went to the favela of Asa Branca in the Jacarepaguá districtto interview community members about the favela history and their memories of the develop-ment [28]. They also helped sponsor civic meetings, during which community members learnedabout their roles in the planning process and discussed issues such as the obligations of thegovernment and challenges they were facing in the community [28]. The intention of the citygovernment to carry out the participatory planning should be acknowledged: the governmentdid indeed make efforts to encourage active citizenship and involve the community members inthe beginning of the planning process. However, such efforts essentially collapsed in early 2013when the city government cancelled its contract with iBase. Since then, there seems to be noeffective participatory element in play [38]. The abandonment of the participatory methodol-ogy may result from the lack of resources. Alternatively, it may be due to the fast approaching2020 deadline and the mounting external pressures. The fact that it was abandoned right afterthe mayor was re-elected may even be seen as evidence that Morar Carioca simply served as apolitical instrument for Mayor Paes. No matter the cause, two things are clear from the iBaseexample: the city government did not thoughtfully plan for the time and labor costs of a genuineparticipatory methodology when setting program objectives, and it did not have the political willand patience needed to carry it out in the implementation stage.

INDIRECT DISPLACEMENT AND DIRECT REMOVAL Despite the intention to avoid eviction anddisplacement in the plan, the Morar Carioca program has caused both indirect displacementsand direct evictions. Housing improvements in general, without proper land regulations andtitling, may lead to displacement of residents. There have been cases where residents are pushedout of areas with increasing values due to slum upgrades. For instance, in one favela in theComplexo de Alemão, the President of the Residents’ Association was priced out of her homealong with 416 other families because the rent rose over 300% as a result of upgrading and

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speculation. [29] Consequently, some have argued that the upgrade efforts are “’makeup’ toconceal a deeper reality of social neglect” or even worse, “a systematic eviction push throughthe backdoor of gentrification”. [11] In either case, it is ultimately the city government thatneglects the potential impacts of upgrading on the housing markets and thus indirectly enablesdisplacement. If indirect displacement is just a well-intentioned failure, however, then the directremoval is a complete defeat of the government in fulfilling its promise. As the official deadlineof 2020 and, perhaps more importantly, the 2016 Olympic games approach, there have beenincreasing instances in which the government has adopted the eviction approach to clear outslums. Such action fundamentally undermines the intention of the Morar Carioca program andsends the approach to slums in Rio back to the early 20th century. This example not only showsthe detrimental effects of a stringent deadline imposed on the program, given what the programintends to achieve, but more importantly suggests that the city government’s efforts in fulfillingthe promise of participatory approach and social integration were disingenuous.

REAPPROPRIATION OF THE “BRAND” As the Morar Carioca program has struggled to fulfill itspromises, there have been more uses of the name “Morar Carioca” for other interventions thatare not included in the official program. For example, sometimes it refers to large public worksprojects, such as construction of cable cars, as opposed to participatory upgrading. Moreover,the reappropriation of the brand actually started as early as in 2010 when non-participatoryinterventions, that are titled Morar Carioca Phase I, happened. [38] What is worse than the factthat the name “Morar Carioca” does not imply participatory planning in practice anymore isthat the name is actually used for political purposes [38]. Mayor Paes frequently mentioned“Morar Carioca” during his re-election campaign in October 2010, referring in fact to results ofthe unofficial non-participatory phase I. In contrast, the mayor has made fewer references tothe program since being re-elected. [38] In brief, the capacity of the program has dissipated overtime. Due to the lack of transparency and effective communication with the public, there is littleinformation available as to the current stage of the program. What we do know is that the keyelements of the program have fallen apart.

CASE STUDY: VILA UNIÃO DE CURICICA

Vila União de Curicica is located in the West Zone, just 1 kilometer from the 2016 Olympic site.Residents were originally informed by the city that part of the community would be removed forthe construction of the TransOlimpica highway and BRT line but that the rest of the communitywould receive upgrades through Morar Carioca. The firm contracted to conduct field work ofresidents’ preferences and needs came into the community for two weeks but then stoppedunannounced. Several months later, residents were informed that the entire favela needed to bedemolished for the construction of the new roads. City representatives, however, claim that VilaUnião was slated for removal from the beginning and was never going to receive upgrades. Yet,this claim is contradicted by both residents and public documents. [12]

Residents were told they would be relocated to Colônia Juliano Moreira, federally fundedpublic condominiums. Following this announcement, the city offered social rent allowances

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because the public housing projects were not yet completed. At a community meeting, however,a representative of a wealthy neighborhood that borders Vila União blamed favela residents fornot having proper documentation to receive the condominiums. Still, the city promised that itwould not leave residents in the social allowance program indefinitely, and that once paperworkwas accounted for, all residents would be relocated to apartments. Meanwhile the floor plan ofthe apartments in the Colônia Juliano Moreira development were first advertised as 44 squaremeters each, but this number has since been decreased to 37 square meters. Resident organizershave resisted these offers and some are demanding not social rent allowances or apartments, butthe right to stay in their community. But those residents who have refused cash payouts claimthat the city is attempting to remove them through more coercive means. [2] A Rio on Watcharticle reported that the municipal garbage company stopped responding to trash collectionrequests in the favela and other public services have been cut. A resident and business owner,quoted in the article, claimed: ”I feel assaulted. I feel like there is a criminal with a gun to myhead.” [42]

Though there are mixed accounts of the events on the ground, critics have argued that theseremovals are rooted in the government’s concern to beautify the city for the Olympics. Whetheror not this is true across the board, at least one community of 900 families is facing displacementfor the construction of a BRT line. The story of this community symbolizes the sometimes detri-mental effects of big international events on the participatory potential of informal upgrading.As we have discussed, community-led planning is a long and difficult process, but the stricttimelines of international events have the ability to thwart progress on the ground.

4 LESSONS FOR PLANNING PRACTICE – GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS

In the context of global urbanization, developing countries have seen dramatic increases intheir slum populations. In response, the United Nations has placed improving the quality of lifeamong informal settlement dwellers at the top of their agenda. Housing conditions for theseslum dwellers are problematic and pose serious threats to basic human rights. With almostone billion people worldwide living in informal urban settlements, it is increasingly urgent topropose and carry out appropriate, comprehensive, and long-term strategies to improve slumdwellers’ living conditions. Analyzing past planning practices, like Favela Bairro and MorarCarioca, that have failed to adequately address these issues assist us in moving forward. ThroughRio’s case study, we come to understand the role and necessity of community-based planningboth locally and globally. Such understanding is applicable in many places that share similarissues, both culturally and politically with Rio. While recognizing the difficulties in implementingparticipatory planning, we firmly believe that in any context, it is crucial to the success ofsociopolitical reforms. Otherwise, traditional power dynamics will continue to dominate asevidenced by stories from the Favela-Bairro and Morar Carioca programs. In addition, the threatof displacement deserve attention. Displacement comes in different forms and can be facilitatedby ill-structured systems and weak implementation power that will only increase inequity infavelas, slums and any community worldwide. Direct and indirect displacements in Rio are only

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examples of a widely distributed and recurring issue. With past experience in mind, plannersshould tackle the issues presented by informal settlements with caution and bolster our toolkitswith successful examples of participatory planning to ensure we have the ammunition necessaryto engage funders and key stakeholders in the process of cultural transformation and communityempowerment.

CONCLUSION

In an increasingly urbanized and largely informally settled world, the lessons of Favela-Bairroand Morar Carioca are critical for today’s planners. There are no easy solutions to the precarityof urban slums, and as we have seen in the case of Rio de Janeiro, even billions of dollars ofinvestment can have limited impacts with a flawed methodology. There is certainly hope in whatthese programs have so far accomplished; they made measurable improvements to physicalconditions in Rio’s favelas, and set forth the intention to integrate favelas into the social fabric ofthe city. Such investments fail to reach their full potential, however, without a real commitment topublic engagement and a long-term outlook on the improvement of slums. Planners, civic leaders,and community organizers in informal settlements around the world should seek opportunitiesto combine financial resources with a renewed sense of commitment to giving voice to theresidents whose lives they seek to improve. Most importantly, they should remember that atop-down vision of slum improvement may not be improvement at all.

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