This government’s tightening of belts promises an unsettling change for Brazilian cities: the end of the country’s ambitious slum upgrading programs. Brazil has a lot of wealth, but many neighborhoods are still poor. They have no sanitation and are not equipped with basic infrastructure.
The city’s peripheral area
The country has dealt with its slums differently in the past. It has razed them and relocated residents. In the late 1980s, a focus was placed on upgrading, which was aided in part by a 1988 new constitution that included Housing alongside other rights such as health, education, and food. In 1988, a new constitution was adopted that included Housing as a right alongside health, nutrition and education.
The strategy was a response to a century-long displacement of poor residents, beginning with the “city beautification movements” of the early 20th Century and ending in real estate speculation during the 1950s & 1960s. The military government of early 1980s enforced mass evictions from valuable areas in the city.
Poor people had to move further away from the commercial hubs of cities as shantytowns began to be bulldozed. Brazilian slums can be found mainly in the urban fringe.
Such measures not only pushed the poor out of cities, but also encouraged the creation of new neighbourhoods. City of God in Rio de Janeiro, once violent that inspired a movie of the same name, is a result of 1960s policies to remove residents from 63 urban slums. Today, the southern part of Rio de Janeiro is the richest area of the city.
Brazil’s Urban Reform Movement
In the late 1980s, cities began to experiment with new strategies. Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, among other cities, were pushed by the urban social movements that dominated Brazil’s early democracy period, and the 1988 Constitution bolstered them. They began to partner with residents to upgrade slums, in partnership, and at a modest cost.
The Certificates for Real Right to Use addressed the issue of land tenure by recognizing the right of slum dwellers to occupy. The cities also enacted new zoning regulations that designated certain neighbourhoods as ” Special Social Interest“, meaning they had to be affordable for those in the lowest income brackets.
A highway that was built to accommodate the Olympics runs through Vila Uniao, Rio. This is not the upgrade residents are looking for. Nacho Doce/Reuters
Locals, feeling safe for the first time from the threat of eviction, began to invest in the homes they lived in, replacing the precarious tin shanty with larger, higher-quality constructions. They started small businesses in the neighborhoods.
In 2001, the new City Statute mandated local governments to develop concrete legal tools in order to combat the problem of “irregular urban property.” In the 1980s, low economic growth and increasing unemployment led to more people settling in slums. The population density in Brazil’s informal settlements is now between 500 and 2,000 residents per hectare.
These neighborhoods were also facing more complex problems, so upgrading the area would require extensive physical work. This included building drainage systems, widening the roads, creating green spaces, and other projects that required additional funding. Usually, this money was obtained from international donors.
