Page 9 - UmRio Sustainability - Action Plan

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Favelas and urban communities, names officially used by the Brazilian Institute of

Geography and Statistics (IBGE), are a natural consequence of Brazil’s income
inequality, racism, social injustice, and a lack of affordable housing (IBGE, 2024). For
over 50 years, IBGE referred to favelas as “subnormal agglomerations,” which provides
context for how historically the government and many citizens have viewed these
informal settlements and communities. Only in 2024 did IBGE stop using the
derogatory term “subnormal agglomerations” and begin formally using favela, at the
request of favela residents (favelados) who have in recent years tried to ascribe new
and positive meaning to the term favela (Pochmann et al., 2024).

According to Theresa Williamson, Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning and Executive
Director of Catalytic Communities, what makes a favela is the following:
“Neighborhoods that emerge from an unmet need for affordable housing; Established
and developed with no outside or governmental regulation; Established and developed
by individual residents (no centralized or outside ‘developers’); Continuously evolving
based on culture and access to resources, jobs, knowledge, and the city” (Williamson,
n.d.).

Favelas, particularly in Rio de Janeiro, continue to grow due to rural residents arriving
without resources or arranged housing in search of employment, typically low-paying
manual day labor (Valladares, 2000). These new residents often settled close to large
cities in the nearby mountains rather than outlying areas to reduce the financial cost
and time of their commute to work. In addition, the government has historically been
unable or even unwilling, for various reasons, to create sufficient affordable housing for
citizens, which also led to the growth of favelas in the mountainous and hilly areas
surrounding the formal city of Rio de Janeiro (Valladares, 2000).

Near the end of the 19th century, the first favelas were settlements called “bairros
Africanos” or African neighborhoods (Ribeiro, 1995). They were areas where runaway
and formerly enslaved people settled because they possessed no land and no
employment. Before the first favela in the surrounding mountains around Rio, working-
class and poor residents were often forcibly removed from the city center and made to
live in the suburbs outside of the city where work, social services, and health services

were not available. However, the 1970s brought an influx of people from rural areas,
particularly the northeast of Brazil, looking for employment and the chance to send
money back to their families. Unable to find places they could afford on meager
salaries, many people began settling in the nearby hills and mountains where they
could live for free and commute to work with less time and cost (Ribeiro, 1995).

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