Comprehensive Regeneration of Informal Neighbourhoods
Antananarivo’s Workshop - Activity Report September 2007
Commission 3 - Metropolis Antananarivo’s Workshop Activity Report
CREDITS
METROPOLIS Josep Roig, Secretary General Christine Piquemal, Deputy Secretary General
PREFEITURA MUNICIPAL DE SÃO PAULO Elisabete França,Secretary of Low Income Housing
TECHNICAL COORDINATOR Verena Andreatta, International Consultant
EXECUTIVE COORDINATOR Gabriel Barros, METROPOLIS Secretariat General
AUTORES Elisabete França, Secretary of Low Income Housing for São Paulo
Claudius Vinicius Leite Pereira, President and Director of the Urbanization Company of Belo Horizonte
Hélcio Borges, Urbanization Company of Belo Horizonte
Fernando Cavalieri, Director of Geographic Information at the Pereira Passos Institute, Río de Janeiro
Lalaonira Rahamefy,Director General of SEIMAD (Real Estate Equipment Society of Madagascar)
Verena Andreatta, International Consultant
Edition: Secretary of Housing, São Paulo Municipal Government
Graphic Design: Ricardo Shigaki
September 2008
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CONTENTS
COMPREHENSIVE REGENERATION OF INFORMAL NEIGHBOURHOODS Do the same problems require the same solutions? Presentation 1 Objectives 2 Desired results 2 Proposed methodology 3 Participants 3
EXPERIENCES IN URBAN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT IN PRECARIOUS NEIGHBOURHOODS: Components, the Gradual Approach and Levels of Implementation Verena Andreatta 4
COMPREHENSIVE REGENERATION PROJECT OF ANDAVANAMBA AND ANOSIBE DISTRICTS (ANTANANARIVO) Verena Andreatta based upon the PowerPoint submitted by Mr. Lalaonira Rahamefy 16
THE METROPOLITAN ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM IN WATER SOURCES: The case of São Paulo Elisabete França 24
THE VILA VIVA (LIVE VILLAGE) Serra agglomerate program and the Interventions of structuring character Cláudius Vinícius Leite Pereira and Hélcio Martins Borges 42
THE FAVELA-BAIRRO PROGRAMME OF THE CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO Fernando Cavallieri 54
COMMISSION 3 TECHNICAL TRAINING WORKSHOP Recommendations 75
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Comprehensive Regeneration of Informal Neighbourhoods: Do the same problems require the same solutions?
ANTANANARIVO MADAGASCAR
1. PRESENTATION
In the first “Comprehensive Neighbourhood Regeneration” meeting held by Metropolis Commission 3 in São Paulo in April 2006, the African and Brazilian cities demonstrated their interest in working together on the problematic issues and solutions to bring to informally settled neighbourhoods.
Aiming to respond to this request, Metropolis proposes to organise a “Technical Training Workshop” for African cities interested in comprehensive neighbourhood regeneration projects during the meetings held inAntananarivo in September.
Given the city's hands-on experience in informal neighbourhoods, which was widely discussed, recognised, and celebrated in 2005 with the “Improvement project for the neighbourhoods of Andavamamba and Anosibe in the southwestern zone of Antananarivo,” the metropolis is a particularly appropriate place to hold this workshop. We will be able to take advantage of the opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge of other informal settlement regeneration projects like “Isotry.” Exchanges between the managers and technicians regarding the projects and good practices will count on the support of experts from Brazilian cities (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte) and Barcelona.
Two questions seem to be of interest given the present condition of comprehensive neighbourhood regeneration projects on theAfrican continent:
What are the different levels of implementation for works on public service infrastructure and equipment?Are the works in question structural and/or isolated?
How have the health education, environmental, and professional training and capacity- building programmes for community actors in the zones of intervention been carried out? Could we consider the use and maintenance of the newly created spaces to be “good”!
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2. OBJECTIVES
The objectives proposed for this workshop were:
1)Allow theexchange of experiences between the actors who participate in projects of comprehensive improvement for informal settlements in African cities and Brazilian cities (South-South exchange). Some practical cases from Anatananarivo will be subject to analysis by the group of workshop participants as examples and paradigms for implementing comprehensive regeneration projects.
2)Analise the differentlevels of implementation of urbanisation in the presented and visited projects. Learn the most appropriate tools and techniques for achieving physical improvements in informal settlements.
3)Find out how management programmes in health, the environment, and professional trainingfunction in zones which have already received large and comprehensive intervention with irrevocable improvements in the lives of their inhabitants. This includes identifying the most effective elements of each experience and incorporating them into the good practices to attain sustainability.
4)Noticethe extent to which a transformation has taken place in the labour, income, and health conditions of the inhabitants of the zones benefiting from comprehensive regeneration projects, as well as the most suitable indicators for improving evaluation and monitoring. This includes identifying the best practices for fighting against poverty.
5)Exchange experiences in comprehensive regeneration projects for informalneighbourhoods which weremanaged by foreign non-governmental organisations, enjoyed a high level of participation, and were carried out in African cities (North-South exchange).
3. DESIRED RESULTS
A synthesis of the debates will be useful for developing a “catalogue of good practices ” starting from the different situations of neighbourhoods benefiting from comprehensive regeneration programmes, and especially with respect to the levels of implementation for works and infrastructure.
This also includespresenting the best examples from the planned and visited sites which stand out because of the good management and monitoring of the norms of health and environmental education by the beneficiary governments and populations, as well as the guaranteed continuous maintenance of the works or constructed equipment.
We anticipate thetraining of municipal technicians in more operational subjects such as the levels of implantation of basic infrastructure, the management of socially and environmentally oriented programmes, and the training of community actors, to name a few.
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4. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
Three working days were proposed to present the case studies of Antananarivo and the Brazilian cities (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte). The presentation of the case studies, their practical experiences, and the lessons learned adhered to a dynamic methodology with the participation of all the attendees. The technical visits within Antananarivo were mandatory in order to become acquainted with the physical works already completed and the function and use of the newly created spaces.
This workshop was directed at municipal technicians, institutions, and municipal companies related to the management and implementation of comprehensive neighbourhood regeneration projects in informal settlements.
5. PARTICIPANTS
Secretariat General METROPOLIS Josep Roig Christine Piquemal
Technical Coordination: VerenaAndreatta
Techical Coordination: Gabriel Barros
ParticipantExperts and Cities : Rahamefy Lalalonira -Antananarivo Helcio Borges - Belo Horizonte Fernando Cavallieri - Rio de Janeiro Elisabete França - São Paulo
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EXPERIENCES IN URBAN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT IN PRECARIOUS NEIGHBOURHOODS: Components, the Gradual Approach and Levels of Implementation. Verena Andreatta
1. The aim of this presentation is to reflect on a series of common elements in recent cases of urban planning and development in informal or precarious settlements, to which I will refer hereafter by the name given to such settlements in Brazil: “favelas”. This article describes three cases. One is from South America: the Favela-Bairro Programme in Rio de Janeiro which I helped to manage for eight years. The other two cases are both in Africa: in Morocco, in the Mediterranean city of Tetouan, where I worked as a direct consultant on the project to improve the Korrat Sbaa neighbourhood; and in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, where I worked as a consultant for the CatalanAssociation of Engineers Without Borders.
The subject has currently enormous interest: the most recent figures show that more than one billion people live today in favelas located in large cities all over the world. There probably exist more than two hundred thousand favelas, with their population ranging from a few hundred to nearly one million people.1 The phenomenon seems set to continue growing inexorably, as Sergio Magalhães, former Rio de Janeiro Housing Secretary, made clear in an article for a local newspaper a few years ago: “According to Brazil's 2000 census, ten million new homes are built every year – the equivalent of Portugal's entire housing park – and 75% of these new residences were built in the most absolutely precarious urban and building conditions, thereby creating an illegal city”.
Although the first favela in Rio de Janeiro appeared in the Morro de Providencia neighbourhodd in the 1880s, the phenomenon largely dates from the 1960s. When in 1980 the city of Rio identified the existence of 377 favelas and estimated their total population at five hundred thousand people, local maps barely recorded their presence. I should mention that the census known as the “Cadastro de Favelas” marked the start of my professional career in a task coordinated by Nando Cavallieri, present here today. Until then, favelas were assigned the geographic name given to places before they were occupied by them, and there were no plan indication that tens of thousands of people were living there. Their existence was not recognised because they were considered a type of habitat that needed to be eradicated. They were merely omitted, even though they were spread all over the city's periphery and were in plain sight to all.
Returning from a trip to the capital Brasilia, I was surprised to find at an airport bookstore, a Portuguese-translated edition of Mike Davis' serious scientific study based particularly on the latest UN-HABITAT report (The Challenge of Slums, 2003). He describes the vast scale, unknown to most, on which slums and poverty have spread in cities in the so-called Third World. This means that nearly three decades have passed from the time that favelas were omitted or removed from maps to the point of adoption of their present urban planning paradigm. For this reason, I shall not trouble to present any numerical data, figures or descriptions of the phenomenon, as such information is readily available to any researcher.
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2. Therefore, my purpose in making this presentation is to reaffirm my belief in the need to provide urban planning for the favelas in order to integrate them into the formal city and to provide their inhabitants full citizenship.
Moreover, in making this argument I would like to emphasise three important aspects in this process of regularisation through urban planning. First, to describe the crucial components of urban planning. Second, to explain the need to understand intervention as part of an evolutionary process characterised by the gradual nature of development as this urban planning goes on. Finally, to define the minimum levels of intervention that enable one to truly speak of urban planning under the shared premise that cities can only be made sustainable through the full distribution of the infrastructure and public services essential for human life.
I shall approach these ideas by describing the experiences mentioned previously, in the belief that the transfer of methods and techniques is possible and necessary in order to begin resolving the problem of slum areas.
3. Theformal city is made up of the fabric of social and economic relations that characterise the city. There is a formal order and the space is organised to condition these relations to the benefit of some, whilst others are excluded or marginalised. In a certain way, this leads to the existence of systems of domination, of complementarity and conflict, the very driving force of urban transformation. All over the world, the street – the public space by antonomasia – represents the city's “soul”. But streets are, in most2 cases, simply places for transit and do not represent the collective space that the city deserves.
The city's form and its spaces' morphology are the fabric on which its social structure is articulated. The physical order by which different uses of the land are expressed translates an economic and political order into space. As a result, decisions to invest in infrastructure become mechanisms that regulate urban growth and transformation. From this standpoint, urban development is defined as a continuous, successive process of physical interventions, options for transformation and priorities for action.
Theinformal city , whether it is a communal land subdivision, slum or favela, is characterised by a form of city creation originated by broad sectors of the poorer classes. Their low incomes do not permit access to formal neighbourhoods and housing. Due to extreme social inequality, the poor nature of public housing construction and urban development policy, the favela has emerged as a real response by the less-favoured sectors. Their limited resources and savings enable them to build their homes little by little, creating veritable “handmade cities”. In this period of accelerated urban growth by the megacities, the housing issue appears to have been solved: a single individual can build his or her own housing unit.
However, at the same time, few individuals with an irregular situation, most of whom lacked property deeds, were able to build basic sanitary, water or electrical infrastructure without effective participation by the State.3 Large swathes of the urban poor have been abandoned, let down, marginalised and excluded.
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4. In the 1960s and 1970s, the paradigms framing these informal urban development processes were dominated by an economic conception of the phenomenon: demographic migrations, regional imbalances and industrialisation explained everything.
In the 1960s, the favelas became the object of eradication policies, with the consequent destruction of houses and the transfer of their inhabitants to public housing projects. However, the problem had already reached such a magnitude that it could not be solved by these policies of providing residential units. In Rio de Janeiro, the population in the favelas stood at nearly 500,000. In fact, the new housing projects followed a different logic compared to the one that had generated the favelas. The movement to eradicate the favelas and re-house their inhabitants can be considered to have ended by the mid-1970s. The scenario was one of economic recession, and the signs pointed to stabilising migratory and population growth rates.
Meanwhile, new and more democratic political systems enabled residents' associations to participate more. Governments and communities started to work together to provide slum areas with services, infrastructure, etc. In this way, the urban planning of Rio's favelas came about through pilot schemes, proposals put forward by Community Urban Planning (known as “Mutirão Remunerado”). Favela dwellers began to be considered consumers with the right to public services provided by all government agencies. Moreover, to assist with the financing process, new utility networks were built using labour from the communities themselves. These experiences were launched on a case-by-case basis, and did not embrace all areas. However, they did provide a huge laboratory for ideas and for training local authority officials, permitting and forming a base for the launch of the Favela-Bairro Programme towards the end of the 20th century. 4
5. In fact, the need to understand the intervention as part of a cumulative and evolutionary process makes it worthwhile to discuss and compare where each of the interventions is located with respect to the process of immigration from the country to the city. In Rio de Janeiro, even though the migratory phenomenon is a process that has been going on for more than one hundred years, it reached its peak during the 1940-1970 period. In such places as Tetouan and Yaoundé the process began later, peaking around 1980-1990. Moreover, recent United Nations reports show that it is in those countries with the highest rates of migration from the rural areas to the city where the phenomenon of informal settlements is growing fastest. This clearly indicates that the conventional city is incapable of assimilating the growth rates to which it is subjected. 5
6. I shall now provide a brief description of the three case studies I previously mentioned, enabling us also to consider the proposal developed at the Technical Training Workshop that brings us together in Antananarivo. That is to say, the question is: “In projects to regenerate slum neighbourhoods, do the same problems require the same solutions? “.
In the case ofRio de Janeiro , it may seem surprising that it is only in the 1992 Master Plan that the existence of favelas is formally recognised and the principal guideline is established to ensure that their inhabitants may remain in them. The 1994 Favela-Bairro Programme was a municipal initiative aimed at “building all the infrastructure and public service facilities necessary to transform the favelas into formal neighbourhoods of the city”, not focusing only on a few points as in previous policies, but embracing all 608 areas and the entire process of urban planning and integration into the city. 6
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With this as a base, a strategy for physical-urban intervention was developed with the idea that formal integration (the regulation of spaces), would encourage social integration, thereby giving rise to a process by which favela inhabitants could achieve full citizenship. To this end, the Mayor's Office in Rio obtained financial support from the Inter-American Development Bank, a loan covering 60% of the total cost approved for the programme.
In the first phase, Favela-Bairro focused on more than 1,000 hectares of marginal favela, incorporating them into the formal city through urban planning programmes , the provision of services and social integration aimed at half a million people. Thanks to the continuation of the initiative over recent years, uncommon in cities subject to political changes where new governments are elected every four years, new practices and actions were implemented, which the representative for Rio de Janeiro will describe in detail at the Workshop tomorrow.
In the case ofTetouan , the Korrat Sbaa neighbourhood, with 1,196 homes and 8,580 inhabitants, it occupies a 54-hectare site located on the foothills on the other side of the River Martil. Declared a priority action area by the Tetouan Urban Agency, financing of approximately 275,000 euros was obtained for a comprehensive regeneration project from The Cities Alliance in the year 2000 . The settlement is built along a precarious, much deteriorated 6-kilometre access route on the mid-slopes of Mount Ghorges.At the time of the project, the government had plans to rebuild this road. The settlement's physical infrastructure was made up of unpaved roads and houses were supplied by a domestic electricity network, although there was no public lighting in the streets. The water supply was not installed in homes, and the community obtained water from fountains located at various points on the mountainside. The five domestic waste containers were insufficient to meet needs, and rubbish was scattered all over the neighbourhood where there was, moreover, just one basic sewage collector pipe. No education, health, sports or social facilities existed. Several partners took part in the project entitled “Urban Strategies for Participatory Processes in Less-Favoured Neighbourhoods in Middle-Sized Moroccan Cities: Upgrading the Korrat Sbaa Neighbourhood”7 in which, as mentioned, community participation was integrated into action by the Moroccan state authorities.
The project adapted to local conditions the methods employed in carrying out similar initiatives in Rio's Favela-Bairro and in Barcelona's Ciutat Vella district. It considered in a broad cooperative process the involvement of not only the local authorities in Tetouan and the National Agency for Fighting Against Unsafe Housing but also the city councils of Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro, and the Habitat and Medcities Agency (which had taken part in strategic planning processes for Tetouan). A national public competition was organised for the project, and a Selection Committee formed by international experts awarded the project to the architect Mekouar Najib, from the city of Tetouan itself. New types of urban development were proposed for the neighbourhood, with land readjustment areas, a system for structuring access roads, paths and squares in a more rational and balanced way, the designation of gardened areas and woods, and the establishment of sports and public facilities (school and nursery).An outstanding building was proposed as the main façade for the neighbourhood, improving the housing park and creating a principal leisure axis with 1,400 sq m of ground-floor commercial premises and a pedestrian street generated by the building alignment. What is particularly interesting about this proposal is that it has much of the vernacular used by urban culture in Tetouan.
Although little of the project has been currently completed (only the main access roads have been finished), its mere existence, together with the process aimed at strengthening community links through the institutionalisation of the Residents' Association, perhaps, could exercise pressure to persuade the authorities to gradually implement the improvements necessary for the whole neighbourhood.
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In the case ofYaoundé , the “Programme to Improve the Quality of Life in Spontaneous Housing Neighbourhoods in the City”8 was developed in three stages. The first, covering the 1995-1998 period, focused on the Melen IV neighbourhood with an Urban Micro-Infrastructure Finance Programme and the creation of a Development Promotion Committee representing the residents' interests. The second stage, 1999-2002, included the development of a pilot action scheme for Melen IV with the participation of the Catalan Association of Engineers Without Borders and the Yaoundé VI Urban District Community, enabling work to be extended towards planning for access to drinking water and wastewater disposal. In the third stage, embracing the 2003-2006 period, the programme covered all six neighbourhoods in Yaoundé 6 district. Four of these (Melen IV, Elig Effa 7, Melen I and Melen 8B) are known as spontaneous housing neighbourhoods, whilst the other two (Eba and Nkom Nkana Plateau) are located in the peri- urban zone and have a total population of approximately 25,000 inhabitants. The cost of the infrastructure was 115 million CFAfrancs, with the beneficiaries contributing approximately 10%. The programme was managed by ERA-Cameroun (Environnement: Recherche, Action) in cooperation with the aforementioned Association of Engineers Without Borders and the Yaoundé VI Urban District Community and the Neighbourhood Development Committees, which were responsible for raising awareness amongst residents and collecting and managing the local contribution.
The “Neighbourhood Projects” were designed according to a sample of restructuring fabrics on five levels as wide as the street. The infrastructure established consisted of pedestrian walks, a bridge for vehicle access and pedestrian bridges, canals to drain rainwater (hard surfaced), ventilated septic tank latrines and the refurbishing of a water tower contaminated by dirty water. A programme for regulating property rights, or “Sécurisation Foncière” (a term preferable to “Légalisation Foncière”) was developed by applying “a posteriori subdivision” based on improvements to “illegally” occupied neighbourhoods.
The project also included important public health research work into the lack of appropriate sanitation systems (“Assainissement des Eaux Usées et Excréta”) and into the practices of actors in informal neighbourhoods. There were high rates of illnesses such as diarrhea in children due to the lack of hygienic conditions, particularly amongst infants from 12 to 23 months, who were more exposed to sources of contamination. Before intervention, there was considerable presence of solid and liquid waste in ditches, as well as stagnant wastewater. Moreover, water supply in wells was contaminated due to direct contact with latrines. Furthermore, houses had been built on land liable to flooding and there was no access to refuse collection in the different neighbourhoods. Community awareness campaigns, particularly in areas around drinking water wells, combined with improved latrines and housing conditions, where seals for water tanks were distributed, helped to reduce intestinal illnesses by 18%.
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7. I drew asingle conclusion from these three experiences: if the concept of urban planning signifies “the result of a series of physical interventions altering space, produced at different times and periods, generated by activities whose requirements are adapted to the possibilities offered by a pre-existing physical space”, then what are the principal problems facing marginalised urban spaces, where there has been no significant alteration since the establishment of slum housing? The cases presented here clearly show a correlation between formal and informal planned areas. Whilst in Rio de Janeiro and Tetouanintervention takes place in a metropolitan area in which the formal fabric basically predominates, in Yaoundé the informal fabric is predominant.
Moreover, as we have seen, the slums in Rio de Janeiro, Tetouan and Yaoundé not only suffer from thesame problems , they also share the same priorities regarding their needs, which can be summarised as follows:
-Road and transportation connections with the rest of the city
-Urban planning at acceptable levels to encourage collective life
-Collective facilities to foment social life and exercise the rights afforded by citizenship
-Regularisation of housing ownership as a way to set the social environment and consolidate cultural heritage
· As regards the main subject of my own intervention, what we understand by acceptable levels of urban planning, considering the aforementioned premise that urban planning is characterised by the possibility of cumulative construction over time, which increases its complexity, theelements shown to be essential are as follows:
-Rainwater drainage -Sewage system -Reinforcement of pathway bases -Provision of potable water -Distribution of electrical power
The solutions to these problems exist on many different levels. The9 total cost of mimetically applying techniques characteristic of firmly-established “First World” cities can be up to six times the cost of applying more basic solutions, more suited to the level of local development. For this reason, the great debate regarding the Favela-Bairro Programme and many more is how to escape from the dictates of imported solutions, from the requirements of handbooks and regulations imposed by service companies far from sharing concerns to extend networks to acceptable levels, and by public administration technicians often trained in more developed countries.
I do not wish to go much further now into this important issue, except to stress that intervention in the three cases described achieved a level of urban planning characterised by:
-Solutions customized for the place where the intervention was planned, work developed bylocal technical teams, the public administration, foreign contractedtechnicians or mixed teams. -Use of simple, locally-developed techniques,whose planning took possible future complexity into account, -Solutions built in cooperation with the local population.
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Theobjectives of urban planning concern the aforementioned aspects: the merely compacting of pathways with adequate side drainage; the use of cement to cover the main thoroughfares; the collection of wastewater and its overall treatment, often simply by using the pond system; the provision of potable water as a priority, at first from controlled fountains but quickly transformed into a supply network; the use of joint power and lighting posts; the installation of refuse containers; and the integration as part of the urban planning concept of spaces forcommunity use linked to collective facilities.
Defining aminimum essential level of urban planning concerns what is a crucial problem in many cities10 today: a large proportion of urban planning in our planet has been constructed through spontaneous processes based on a sequence of land occupation, land subdivision, building, and finally urbanization, which generally culminates the process. These are absolutely precarious city building processes initiated by the extension of a road or the peripheral system, which in turn serves to provide access and drainage, as well as performing the basic task of defining and delimiting land lots (when constructions are not built over constructions,often in the absence of a pathway , as in the Brazilian favelas).
8. This adoption of minimum acceptable levels should be understood as the first step to enable the urban planning process to achieve greater complexity over time. This is what I mean when I talk about the idea of “gradualness ”,11 which attempts to reflect the progressive nature of the urban planning process over a long period of time in which services use pre-existing infrastructure, often rural in origin, to develop new functions. It also refers to the possibility of gradual construction of infrastructure, first the more simple elements, followed by improvements to finally achieve higher levels of complexity, and even, in this same order of things, the use of other infrastructure to temporarily increase the service efficiency.
The requirements for the provision of services and even the technical standards for their production in the space should be understood as the result of the social, economic and technological evolution undergone by a particular society which finally enshrines its own demands on itself about the city that is to be built in legal texts and technical regulations. But this is no more than the temporary embodiment of a certain level of quality, correlated to the society's income levels.And even so, it cannot be understood to be that same society's univocal response to all the demands of urban planning.
9. It follows, then, that the solution for urban planning must be adapted to the type of space to be rehabilitated and to the context into which it is to be inserted. Urban planning levels should be understood as adequate to solve the type of problems described, but are also useful for second-home residential developments built in more advanced countries and which also share certain characteristics regarding legal informality or which act on the margins of town planning. However, it should not be implied that they can be applied merely due to occupation density , the site's peripheral position or other similar factors.
It is the specific conditions of the place , its insertion into the urban fabric and the predominance and compatibility between these functions that predetermine the urban planning solution that should be adopted. The functional aspects corresponding to each type of urban service will also be present, not in an isolated way, but rather with an understanding that they belong to a network that will frequently serve broader sectors of the city. In short, the concept of urban service infrastructure moves within a huge variety of solutions, clearly related to the requirements of the problem to be solved. The project focus should be solved from a perspective supported not only by differences in tendering, use and meaning of a given space, but which should reach its real dimension in the necessary flexibility of networks for its growth and transformation, in the possibility of its gradual construction and replacement easiness.
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10. This leads us to a final reflection, which emphasizes the key role played by the public space and the street in integrating a society. Because the street is the principal element in the formal organisation of the city, its alignments and grade levels define how the private space and buildings are organised. It is also the city's main drainage channel, as well as the distribution channel for all other technical services networks, and it is the space in which mobility is manifested through transportation means of every kind. It is the main site for vegetation, linking parks to the exterior rural space and integrating the urban ecosystem. Fundamentally, it is the space in which citizenship is manifested, a place for social relations and cultural transmission.
1 Davis, Mike. Planeta Favela. Ed. Boimtempo. São Paulo, 2006
2 Herce, Manuel (ed.) y Magrinyà, Francesc. La Ingeniería en la evolución de la urbanística. Edicions UPC. Barcelona, 2002.
3 Magalhães, Sergio. Sobre a Cidade: habitação e democracia no Rio de Janeiro. Pro Editores. São Paulo, 2002.
4 Andreatta, Verena. Ciudades Hechas a Mano. Catálogo de la Exposición de Sur a Norte. Ciudades y medio ambiente en América Latina, España y Portugal. La Casa Encendida. Madrid, 2002.
5 Magrinyà, F.y Michelutti E. Los mecanismos de interacción entre la cooperación internacional y la gobernanza local en Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) y en Yaoundé (Camerún). 7th N-Aerus Conference. Darmstadt. Germany, 2006. Véase web: http//www.naerus.net/sat/workshops/2006/papers.htm
6 About the Program Favela Bairro see the following publications: Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro/Secretaria Municipal de Habitação.Cidade Inteira: A política habitacional da cidade do Rio de Janeiro(incluye los programas Favela-Bairro, Bairrinho y Grandes Favelas), (1999 o también el libro de Conde, LP e Magalhães, Sergio. Favela-Bairro: uma outra história da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Vivercidades. Rio de Janeiro,2004. Another important publication on the subject is in: Bracarz, José (colaboración M. Greene y E. Rojas). Ciudades para Todos: la experiencia reciente en programas de mejoramiento de barrios. Sección de Publicaciones del BID-Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. Washington DC, 2002.
7 For more information about this project see “Memoria de Proyecto de Mejora y Reestructuración del barrio de Koraat Sbaa” un informe elaborado por la Empresa Socintec IBV dirigido alAyuntament de Barcelona. REf. 00ET683 de febrero del 2003.
8 Magrinyà, F,2006..op.cit nota 5.
9 Herce, Manuel. La urbanización como soporte acumulado de la construcción de la ciudad (capítulo 1). In: Herce, Manuel y Miró, Joan. El soporte infraestrutural de la ciudad. Edicions UPC, 2002.
10 Herce, M., 2002. op.cit nota 9. 11 Herce, M., 2002. op.cit nota 9.
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Korrat Sbaa - Tetuan
Yaoundé - Cameroun
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Favela Bairro - Rio de Janeiro
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Minimum level of Urbanization
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Verena Andreatta Architect and Urban Planner
Graduate of the Faculdades Bennett (Rio de Janeiro, 1981). Received an MA in "Housing, Planning and Building" from the Institute for Housing Studies (Rotterdam, 1984). Director of Urban Projects and Chair of the Municipal Institute of Urban Planning of the Prefecture of Cidade do Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 2000, a period in which she participated in the management of the emblematic “Rio-Cidade” and “Favela-Bairro” urban regeneration programmes. She currently works as a Consultant on matters of Informal Settlements for the World Association of the Major Metropolises (Metropolis). She attained a Doctorate in Urban Studies at the UPC-ETSAB (Barcelona).
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COMPREHENSIVE REGENERATION PROJECT OF ANDAVANAMBA AND ANOSIBE DISTRICTS (ANTANANARIVO) Verena Andreatta based upon the PowerPoint submitted by Mr. Lalaonira Rahamefy (Director General of SEIMAD)
1. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLACE
The capital city of Madagascar, Antananarivo, is located in a plateau of hills, from 1250 to 1435 meters above sea level, and is located within a territory with diversified topography. The swamp areas, named Ikopa, Sisaony and Mamba are located 1.250 m high and form the marshy flat ground. This flat ground is protected by a dyke on the right margin of the Ikopa River (PIRD = 1.750 ha, only 20% of the CUA (Antananarivo Urban Community) administrative surface). It is characterized mainly by the rice plantation and horticulture in its periphery. The annual rainfall is 1,300 mm with 90% of this quantity normally occurring during the cyclones station. The mean temperature is 18.5ºC, and it may vary from 5ºC to 32ºC.
The characteristics landscape of Antananarivo shows – in its East portion, a small mountain crowned by the old city, the development of which moves downhill in the streets of the city, while the cultivated area, in the marshy region, covers completely a wide strip of land. In the margins of the Anosy Lake, that are urbanized, this urbanization is formal, with a good quality occupation.
The agglomeration in Antananarivo, the so-called Antananarivo Urban Community (CUA), forms the political and economical Capital City of the country, concentrating 55% of its Gross Domestic Product. It is divided into 6 district or city-districts, has 1,100,000 inhabitants and occupies an 85 Km² area. The metropolitan extension of Antananarivo (FIFTAMA) is comprised by 27 peripheral communities that add 600,000 inhabitants living within a 340 Km² area. It should be pointed out that the percentile value of the young population is quite high.
2. THE PROBLEMATICS
The prominent problem relative to the situation of the Antananarivo city is characterized by the unipolarity for the people that come from the highland causes a converging flow of population and, and as a consequence, the saturation of the downtown area. The substructures, built in concentric radius networks are underestimated and the compulsory passing through the downtown area of the city jams the old deviation routes. The railroad network is abandoned. The accesses to enter the downtown region of the city are limited. There is a disproportion in respect to the street networks, that are quite dense within a 3 Km radius, but that just disappear in the periphery. The transportation services are obsolete and the bus stations in the downtown area exceed their capacity to carry the user population. It is also noticed that there are no sufficient parking lots to cover the demand of vehicles that access the downtown area of the city.
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Finally, it is noticed that there is a strong problem relative to the mobility in the city, characterized by traffic jam, pollution, stress and a large wasting of time in waiting for transport and during the rides in the transportation media that generates on the other side, economical losses of difficult evaluation. In respect to the situation of the city's substructure, the lack of public sanitation, lack of housing, constant floods, and considering that such structures are obsolete, their decay is relevant, specially in respect to the most serious issue of the city, relative to the countless problems of access to drinking water.
3. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PUBLIC POWERS
The responsibilities of the public powers inAntananarivo are related to the following:
-Flood prevention and assurance of restraints to the built areas;
-Administration of the space: control of the urban extension and density;
-Permeability of the mobility: reduction of traffic jams, reconstruction of the city street network and of the public transportation accessed by the population, etc.;
-Fight against poverty: reduction of the informal sector, increase of the income, reduction of insecurity, etc;
-Public health: fight against epidemics (pests, cholera), access to potable water and to medical care, sensibility againstAIDS, etc.
It should be pointed out that part of these responsibilities is shared with the Antananarivo
AN ANSWER OF THE ANTANANARIVO URBAN COMMUNITY RELATIVE TO THE PROBLEMS SUBMITTED: RE-STRUCTURATION OF THE SOUTHEASTERN DISTRICTS OF THE CAPITAL CITY.
The intervention zone is located within the flooded lowland region of the Capital City and the precarious districts represent those with more population density.
The intervention perimeter comprises 22 sectors (named fokontany) in two city districts, and a 150,000 inhabitants population, 80,000 of which (or 53%) are women and 75,000 (47%) are young men (of less than 25 years old).
The situation was quite dramatic for the population living in these city districts, with the main problems detected in them being connected to the following aspects:
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-The main access road of the city districts (RN 1) was totally impracticable, transformed in an open air sewer and a dumping place for solid residues, etc;
-The city districts were unhealthy, with focus of cholera and pest;
-Amarshy place under any raining season;
-Lack of sanitary equipment outside the main axis;
-The informal market places, implanted in public areas, were neither appropriate nor authorized;
-Lack of internal transport service within the city districts, causing the absence of basic equipment, accumulation of garbage due to the inaccessibility of collection;
-Acity district economy in permanent retrocession;
-An abandoned area, focus or large delinquency.
Antananarivo Southwestern District: Andavamamba
The works that needed immediate attention were implemented earlier, such as the construction of the access avenue of this zone, the RN1 and theAnosibe Market.
A large project prepared by the Antananarivo Urban Community was developed for the Andavamamba and Anosibe City Districts, to improve the life conditions of the most needed population, such as:
-Rehabilitation of the main axis (RN1), with separation of flows (interconnection among city districts / service road for local transport) and urban organization (bus stops, taxis, parking lots, sidewalks, bike lanes, accesses to the river margin and «Petit Boulevard» (Rocade);
-Rehabilitation and extension of the substructures of service roads within the city districts;
-Rehabilitation and extension of the sanitation and draining systems (water reservoirs, sewage systems for served water and draining systems);
-Rehabilitation of theAnosibe Market (45.000 m², 1.700 sale points);
-Construction of four other local markets for the different city districts;
-Construction of a flower market;
-Construction of a «taxis be» station, namely, a station for collective minibuses;
-Construction of sanitary equipment within the city districts (public water fountains, washrooms, blocks with toilets and showers);
-Placing of drums to collect solid wastes and to organize the pre-collection.
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Mobilization of the agents for the development of the Antananarivo Urban Community:
-Elaboration of an integral program: 5 million Euros, donation from the French DevelopmentAgency (Agence Française de Développement –AFD:
1-Rehabilitation of the RN1 and neighboring districts sanitation network;
2-Reconstruction of the Route Nationale 1 in 4.5 Km within the city and of the local service roads of the city districts;
3-Social follow-up (construction of community equipment and participative administration, supporting theAFVP);
-Connection by the Petit Boulevard, the downtown contour avenue: 4 million euros, donation by the European Development Funds (FED);
-Renewal of the Anosibe wholesale market: 4 million American dollars, a loan by the World Bank (IDA):
-Construction of 1,800 covered stands and sanitation substructure facilities; -Construction of a loading and unloading station and of a parking lot; -Implantation of an administrating system involving the businessmen and agents of the CUA;
-Coordination of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) activities (Handicap International, Care, InterAide, ENDA, EFVP, etc.) and strengthening of the association group within the city districts (community administration of sanitary equipment).
Conclusion
After the realization of the project, improvements were detected in respect to:
-No new case of cholera was notified within this area;
- Improvement of the houses by their occupants;
-Development of business structures;
-Creation of new activities.
These operations were integrated to the new Urbanism Director Plan of the City Agglomeration, and the forecast is to extend it to the Southern Flat Ground ofAntananarivo.
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Rahamefy Lalaonirina Director General of SEIMAD (Real State Equipament Socity of Madagascar)
Stock Management at the Europa Company (Sales and IT Consumables Company) (Tourcoing, France) (1989/1991). Night Auditor at the Hotel-Restaurant Fimotel, Lille, France (1991/1994). Alternate training on Quality Control with the SEL company/Jardin au bout du monde (Herblay – France) (1991/1994). Sales Director/Consultant/Quality Control Manager for export in the DERA Group Activities: Arts and Crafts, Hotel Industry, Tourism, Joinery, etc. Organisation and participation in various outdoor exhibitions, (Printemps, Foire de Paris, Foire de Rouen, etc.) (1995/1999). Director of the Mayor's Office, Deputy to the Mayor (May – August 2002). General Coordinator of theAntananarivo Development Office (BDA) City District ofAntananarivo.
Urban planning and town planning. Design, launch, follow up and management of infrastructure and equipment projects, as well as works manager for the city of Antananarivo and its suburbs. (2003/2005). Member of the National Heritage Council and of the Technical Committee for the Reconstruction of Rova (from 2006). Campaign Manager of President Marc Ravalomanana during the local (1999) and presidential (2001) elections. Organisation of the computerisation for the Credis SARL company (1987-1988). Study on the impact of the advertising brochures on consumers for the UGCLDistribution Company at Bois-Colombes (1985).
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THE METROPOLITAN ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM IN WATER SOURCES: THE CASE OF SÃO PAULO Elisabete França
1. The City – Diversified Space
The stage for rapid and great transformations, the city has become the great icon of the 20th. Century, taking shape as the most complex expression of human existence and, consequently, the space that draws together the antagonisms, conflicts, contradictions and also the most varied manifestations of man's creativity.
It has come to be the privileged territory for establishing human relationships, and it is, par excellence, the space of power and the concentration of wealth, where the financial markets, the international corporations and other agents of transnational capital are concentrated. As a result they are obliged to structure themselves in such a way as to answer the new demands of this economic organization, which has as one of its chief objectives to permit the rapid flow of information.
In being structured for the new times, the cities do not show results shared between their inhabitants as a whole, but reflect, though in a distinct way in each region of the planet, inequalities in the distribution of wealth, their ethnic, political, socioeconomic, cultural and religious values, as well as their stage of technological development and their potential in relation to natural resources.
As a consequence of this complexity it isn't possible to determine a single course of action that may provide a universal model. It becomes necessary to rethink the theoretical, technological and practical approach to intervention in the cities, it being understood that now one is dealing with a body of collectivities each with its own identity.
It is important to emphasize that this new urban reality presents distinct conditions in the developing countries; in which the difficulties that the poorest have in getting themselves established appear with great force, resulting in incessant and uncontrolled urban growth, in general lacking public policies capable of meeting the most immediate necessities of the needy population.
What are sought currently, with respect to public policies, are much more complex solutions that respect this existing diversity. Such solutions do not just come from the public administration, the universities, and the suggestions of specialists.
According to Dimenstein (2002), the solution to the grave urban problems in the field of infrastructure, of housing, of the scarcity of public services, of growth in the levels of violence, is in “seeking the ethics of the streets, listening to and seeing other viewpoints, other horizons in spaces that, being so deteriorated, seem to have no horizon. Hearing these silent beings, noisy only in their violence and encouraging them to generate and participate in the building is to produce, through ethics, mutual respect. The aesthetics of belonging”.
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This is the basic concept of the large-scale slum upgrading projects that some Brazilian cities have been adopting, including among them, the action taken in the Guarapiranga Program. Besides providing basic infrastructure services, it is about working with the concept of belonging, of reinforcing a sense of identity, of creating roots in the place you live in.
2. Sustainment – a new challenge for the administration of cities
In these new diverse spaces, from the eighties on, the concept of sustainable development has also taken on importance, and has come to be considered an important element in the formatting of public policies. Three important world forums define and reinforce this concept and the member countries of the United Nations as a whole have made a commitment to its adoption.
The Bruntland report, presented by the World Commission on the Environment and Development to the Assembly of the United Nations in 1987, consolidated the concept as being “economic, social and political progress made in such a way as to ensure the satisfaction of the needs of the present without jeopardizing the capacity of future generations to satisfy their own needs”. The message broadcast to all the member countries of the United Nations left it clear that economic growth should be supported by the global stability necessary and that governmental decisions on the forms of development adopted should be analyzed in relation to the cost/benefit of their future effects, so as to guarantee resources for the generations to come.
The World Conference on the Environment and Development – ECO-92 established the concept of sustainable development on the world agenda, and approved the creation of Agenda 21, an important instrument for the adoption and workability of the concept. In seeking development,Agenda 21 defends a program to be taken on by local governments with the strong participation of the various sectors of civil society, today an almost universal reality in what concerns the preservation of the environment and the quality of life.
Finally, in 1996, the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements - Habitat II discussed the future of cities as a central question, which is to say, how to guarantee the city itself and provide access to it, demonstrating the importance of urban life from the perspective of the 21st. Century. In Istanbul, commitments of solidarity in relation to living in cities were established and, by extension, the building of more just, receptive and democratic sustainable cities.
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3. Urban poverty – an old challenge for the administration of cities
To this form of contemporary urban organization may be added the accelerated process of urbanization, concentrating population in a considerable number of large cities-metropolises, as a result of the search for better opportunities for individual development.
According to data from the report on the Situation of World Population – 2007, made by the United Nations Population Fund – UNFPA, in 2008 the urban world will reach the significant number of 3.3 billion people living in urban areas, which represents more than half the world population.
By 2030, this number should reach almost 5 billion people, around 80% of the world population. As a result, governments should be alert to the fact that the concentration of poverty will increase, as well as the growth of precarious settlements lacking in basic infra-structure that are today to be found in almost all large and medium-sized cities.
The report warns that “many of these new inhabitants will be poor. The future of these people, the future of the cities in the developing countries, the future of humanity itself will depend on the decisions taken now”. Hence the importance of sharing successful experiments that seek to propose courses of action for resolving the existing problems, and are in synchrony with the recognition of this world reality.
The Brazilian example in what is known as the evolution of the urban population fits into this reality, that several countries share in common. The Brazilian migratory evolution, rural to urban, between the forties and nineties, is significant – the level of urban population went from 26.35%, in 1940, to 80%, in 1980. The speed with which this process took place resulted in a series of phenomena that contributed to a picture of urban poverty observable in all the large Brazilian cities and currently coming to affect the medium-sized regions. Between the sixties and the nineties, the urban areas received a new population of between eighty and ninety million inhabitants. A significant part of this people ended up living in locations without access to basic infrastructure services, adequate living conditions, communal leisure spaces, and health and education services. Recently arrived from rural areas and from small- sized cities, a significant proportion of these new dwellers were destined to occupy run-down areas, such as favelas, slum tenements, houses on stilts and illegal lots that, being detached from the formal city, are generally located on the outskirts of large cities or else in the old and deteriorated historic city centers.
It has been calculated that in the two largest Brazilian metropolises, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the population that lives in this extreme situation is equivalent to almost 40% of the total of dwellers, which is to say, 4 million in São Paulo and 2 million in Rio.
In the case of São Paulo, the city and metropolitan region, the advance of inadequate occupation that, in the seventies and eighties, was fed by migration from other regions of the country and the state, in recent years has come to be the result of migration that is internal to the region, from the center of the metropolis to its outskirts, included among which are the fragile areas of water sources.
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In spite of this picture of need that such an urbanization process demands from public administrators, one must recognize that rural-urban migration, in general, still results in an improvement in the quality of life of the populations that come to live in the big city, as the demographic concentration makes possible better indices of productivity at work and access to the supply of basic services, at lower prices when not free of charge.
In other words, the accelerated urbanization of the cities at first facilitated a relative progress in attending the basic necessities of the population which did not imply, on the other hand, the elimination or a substantial reduction in poverty. As Brakarz (2002) defends, what predominates today is so called economic poverty, characterized by insufficient earnings to guarantee survival in the urban environment.
In the city of São Paulo, the formal housing market has shown itself incapable of attending the demand for land and homes of a considerable segment of the population; this is exacerbated by the incapacity to pay of low-income families, whose acquisitive power is almost never compatible with the values of plots of land or dwellings offered by the formal market. The high prices are principally due to the scarcity of plots for sale at compatible prices and locations.
Another factor to be emphasized that contributes to the exclusion of a reasonable contingent of families from the formal market, is the level of demands made by the urbanistic norms in force, that impose standards of infrastructure and services that raise the value of plots, driving the low-income population even more to the informal areas of the city.
Deprived of the capacity to access the formal housing market, the poor opt for occupying lands of low commercial interest or else restricted by the urban legislation, areas ignored by the formal sector of housing production.
What may be observed as being a consequence of this informality is the increasingly accentuated occupation of areas subject to environmental restrictions, risk areas having steep slopes or subject to flooding, contaminated soils, areas close to sanitation landfills or garbage dumps, etc. Also, a recurring fact that may be observed is the irregular occupation of plots destined for unexecuted public works.
In São Paulo, the informal settlements concentrate a large number of social problems, especially those associated with the insalubrious conditions resulting from the absence of basic infra-structure and accentuated by the vulnerability of the groups that live there, occasioned by factors related to the informality of jobs, to missing or abandoning school, early pregnancy, domestic violence and drug trafficking.
4. Water Sources – a risk to the sustainment of the RMSP
As part of this picture of poverty on the outskirts, one case deserves special emphasis: the protected areas of the water sources located south of the city; to where the populations that place themselves on the edge of established legality migrate, to the empty spaces existing in these protected areas, putting at risk the water supply of the metropolitan region.
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In the same way, in the neighboring municipalities that are part of this southern quadrant of the metropolitan region and have their territories in part or totally classified as protected areas for the water sources, a similar situation is to be met with. A significant proportion of the dwellers in these municipalities, especially the low-income populations, take up residence in these places because of the opportunity provided by the price of the land, to be found chiefly on the informal market, even though the links of these people to employment, when they exist, are in the city of São Paulo. So, occupation in areas of water sources grows, and the cost to the city increases considerably, especially when one considers the transport and circulation factor.
The environmental problems of the São Paulo Metropolitan Region – RMSP – are among the most challenging in the country. A region of extreme scarcity of water resources, it has in the water sources of the Alto Tietê basin its greatest source of supply, which are under an increasing threat of being lost, or at least, of suffering a large increase in the cost of their exploitation, as a result of the water pollution provoked principally by inadequate housing occupation.
We may consider that the challenges for the public administration are concentrated on the preservation of the water sources for supplying the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo with water, in maintaining the operational conditions of the supply system, controlling and putting the occupation of its territory in order and improving the quality of life of the resident population, particularly with regard to the sanitary and habitational infrastructure of the poor population, more concentrated in the areas of water sources than in the rest of the RMSP.
These challenges signify, in terms of urban policies, the correction and control of the existing pollution problems, with the implantation and improvement in the quality of the associated services, of adequate systems of sanitary drainage, the collection and disposal of solid waste, the upgrading of slums and areas lacking urban infra-structure, the recuperation of run-down areas and the control of sources of non-domestic pollution.
In the case of the areas occupied in an irregular manner, the great challenge is to maintain or introduce, when the case, quality standards of use that represent acceptable levels of pollutant loads reaching the natural system. This means that the control of water pollution and the quality of life of the resident population must be considered variable, interconnected and unassociable. Also implicit is the consideration that population removal away from the water sources should be seen as a last resort, given the huge economic and social cost this represents.
Parallel to corrective action, there still remains the indispensable challenge of controlling the occupation that must be sought by means of effective action in monitoring and inspection and, principally, through the active management of the territory, with the encouragement of adequate forms of occupation, compatible with it being a water source. This active management is already today a possibility for the near future, with the institution of new legislation for the protection of the water sources.
The complexity and magnitude of the problem demands, on the other hand, management on a regional scale, of metropolitan reach. This is particularly evident with respect to housing policy, which should offer alternatives to revert the flow that may be noted today, from the central areas possessing infrastructure to the water sources that are unable to offer shelter for new contingents of population. However, it also requires the involvement of other sectors and spheres of the administration and public policies, for which an integrated form of management is demanded.
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5. The Guarapiranga Programme – a programme for the sustainability of the RMSP
The Guarapiranga water basin is metropolitan in character, and is made up of the territories of seven municipalities where around 750 thousand people live (IBGE 2000), concentrated, predominantly, in urbanized areas of low housing standards. The reservoir currently caters to the supply of 3 million inhabitants (20% of the supply of the metropolitan region), being the second largest water producer in greater São Paulo. On the edges of the basin territory may still be found strongholds of fauna and flora of the coastal forest.
Due to its strategic interest and metropolitan character, since 1975 the area has been regulated by state legislation – Laws 898/75 and 1172/76 - the first of which aims to discipline the use of the land for the protection of the springs, water courses and other water resources of interest to the RMSP and the second aims to delimit the protected areas of the springs and water courses thatArticle 2 of Law 898/75 refers to.
However, if at first the law impeded the expansion of industrial activities and increases in population density in the region, on the other hand it propitiated a fall in the market value of plots of land, that inadvertently favored uncontrolled urbanization, characterized by a significant number of favelas and irregular lots, and a population density far superior to that compatible with the preservation of the water source.
From the nineteen-sixties on, the advance of the urban sprawl increased to frightening levels; motivated by the demand for labor for large-scale business activities developed in the nearby areas, large population contingents moved to the region, occupying unfavorable areas; currently, around 20% of the basin's population resides in favelas. In the municipality of São Paulo alone, more than 180 favelas communities are located, and with the addition of the irregular lots this figure approaches 200, with a population estimated at around 140,000 inhabitants. Such a process results in problems inherent to this form of urban occupation: areas subject to flooding, land-slides, the throwing of domestic waste and garbage into the waters of the reservoir's contributing streams and increasing blockages.
The impact of this process indicates a gradual deterioration in the quality of the water in the tributaries and the body of the reservoir, putting at risk the future exploitation of this water source for the supply of the metropolitan region of São Paulo.
Taking this list of problems as a starting point, an environmental recuperation programme for the region was developed, which had as basic presuppositions for its viability a series of interventions that sought to mitigate the negative consequences of the occupation of the land.
The programme, begun in 1992, may be considered innovative planning practice given that new forms of public management that sought to reconcile the appropriation of natural resources with the limitation of that appropriation, were brought to the debate. The most important step was to recognize as the central question for a public policy, the possibility of the exhaustion of a natural resource – the water – and the catastrophic consequences for the future of the metropolis this would represent.
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The initial recognition of the distinct conditions present in the object of the intervention was fundamental for the definition of the scope of the programme. I am referring to a preservation area located next to one of the largest concentrations of population in the world, whose population presents one of the highest indices of poverty in the metropolis.
Another innovation of the programme is related to its central objective – clear and synthetic – to recuperate, in the short term, the quality of the waters which supply part of the population of the metropolitan region, which may be easily measured by the monitoring system adopted. All the foreseeable action to be developed by the agents has always had as its goal the achievement of this proposed objective.
In addition to the clear definition of the objective, the precise determination of the spatial area of activity, which includes nothing beyond the boundaries of the water basin; this key element of the programme facilitated the monitoring activities of the results.
Having defined the objective and the area of intervention, two complementary strategies for action were established, very distinct from the practices known until that time; the first had as its aim the development of the technical, financial and institutional capacity for the management of the basin, integrating the state and municipal governments and the society, which resulted in a new legal statute for the water source area; the second had as its goal the improvement of the quality of life of the low-income settlement dwellers, through the improvement and expansion of the basic sanitation infra-structure, the qualification of the most densely occupied and insalubrious urban areas, and the proposal of new public spaces for the development of activities of a collective nature.
Of the general characteristics of the programme, it's worth highlighting the management model of the multisectorial action taken as what distinguishes it as an innovative policy. Going against the tradition of sectorial public management, the creation of the management unit, comprising representatives of the various executive organs of the two levels of government – state and municipal, imposed a new culture that presupposed the seeking of agility of execution, joint effort and the optimization of resources. The management unit represented a first step in the new institutional arrangements that came to manage the sub-basin.
After more than ten years since its inception and the various studies made on the results of the programme, the advance it signified in the modeling of a new form of environmental management policy in the state should be recognized, this being a model that has come to be duplicated in other similar situations.
Besides all the advances obtained for environmental management shared between the various segments of society, one of the great achievements of the programme may be considered the way the question of the region's irregular settlements was faced through the execution of a specific slum upgrading programme.
As a central concept of the programme it was assumed that the control of the water pollution and the quality of life of the resident population were interconnected and inseparable variables and that the removal of the population away from the water sources should be seen as a last resort, given the huge economic, social and political cost that would represent. From this point of view, besides seeking to attain its main objective of an improvement in the quality of the water, the action taken to a conclusion within the scope of the slum upgrading component was incorporated into the municipality's housing policy.
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6. The advances in the management system of the water basins
One of the innovative aspects of the Guarapiranga Programme is a profound change in values and, consequently in legislation, resulting from the integrated practices that were essential to the success of the programme. Although the legislations of 1975 and 1976 had a groundbreaking character for the time, in terms of planning concepts, they were not consistent with the market economy. The owners of large tracts of open land prevented, by force of the new legislation, from potentializing to the maximum the construction indices, preferred the alternative of dividing up their lands illegally, in the case of public areas allowing them to be occupied by favelas.
Recognizing the scenario of urban degradation of the environmentally protected areas of the RMSP, in 1990 the preparation of the Guarapiranga Programme and the creation of the Integrated Management System of Water Resources – SIGRH was begun, in the form of State Law 7663/91, intending to make action concerned with the preservation of the water sources, the protection of the environment, at the same time compatible with the socioeconomic development of the families who live in the region.
The system was based on a management policy divided between three levels of responsibility, the state government and the local governments and, joining the group as decision-making agent, the civil society, something unheard of until that time as a form of public sector decision-making.
The new legislation recognized the existence of the irregular occupations and defined that each sub-basin institute its own specific legislation, based on its own specifications, limitations and possibilities.
It establishes three types of occupation: 1) areas of restricted occupation, of special interest for the preservation, conservation and recuperation of natural resources; 2) areas of managed occupation, of interest for the consolidation or implantation of urban and rural uses, as long as the maintenance of the necessary environmental conditions for the production of water for public supply is assured; 3) areas of environmental recuperation where uses or occupations that jeopardize the quantity and quality of the waters are located, demanding urgent intervention of a corrective nature, like the favelas and irregular lots. In these cases the public authorities must promote environmental recuperation programmes for the reduction of pollutant waste, through the implantation and adaptation of the urban infra-structure system, resettlement of population removed from risk areas and the development of social activities and environmental education.
In the case of the Guarapiranga sub-basin, the specific law was recently approved – Law 12.233/06 establishing rights and responsibilities shared between the two levels of government and the civil society. These are: the elaboration of a Plan of Development and Environmental Protection, the control of the results of the Environmental Quality Monitoring System based on the Correlation of Land Use and Quality of Water Model, the organization of the Information Management System, licensing, regularization, environmental compensation and inspection, penalties and the seeking of financial support.
It establishes moreover, as an area of responsibility of the municipalities, the elaboration of municipal laws for the use and occupation of the land and the preparation of master plans.
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7. The Guarapiranga Programme – Lessons Learnt Slum upgrading answered and still answers for a significant amount of the Guarapiranga recuperation plan, given that the interventions contributed to the solution of problems of sanitation infra-structure, the public transport network, the geotechnical consolidation of the plots of land, the insalubrity of the housing units and even the demand for equipment and urban furnishings.
The results obtained with the first slum upgrading demanded a new orientation for the projects; the thesis was then adopted of the qualification of public spaces so as to allow the existing districts to be integrated into the neighboring ones, that is to say, into the recognized city, the practice of theaesthetic of belonging . As Sergio Magalhães (2000) emphasized, the interventions in the Guarapiranga slums and lots “that arise directly linked to the protection of the water sources illustrate how possible it is to restructure the physical space of the slums, integrating them with the city and maintaining the investments already made by those living there in the production of their dwellings, in a sustainable and environmentally balanced way”.
Based on this orientation, action on slum upgrading is to be understood as just one component in the strategies for the combat of poverty in the municipality, in so far as the investments made on basic infrastructure and services contribute to a reduction in the inequalities faced by the dwellings located in the informal settlements. It was noted that such investments exercise a significant impact on the well-being and quality of life of the families who live in those specific areas.
The interventions in these settlements were further understood as one of the components of a housing policy as the action taken by the programme contributed to the improvement of the stock of accessible housing solutions for low-income families that don't have access to formal credit.
In spite of the positive results achieved, as the programme was not initially structured for the combat of poverty the series of measures taken presupposed a number of revisions and readaptations. Firstly, it should be recognized that the programme did not manage to contain new occupations, this being the fruit of the inexistence of a joint inspection plan, coordinated by the various spheres of government and society.
Another relevant factor to be observed is that the Guarapiranga Programme centered its action on the search for solutions for basic sanitation. For the future the search for an integrated improvement in the living conditions of the resident families must be observable, permitting an increase in effectiveness and focus on more vulnerable groups.
Although the action taken by the programme be considered emblematic, it's necessary to recognize that the investments made in the improvement of the physical and social conditions of the irregular settlements must be complemented by preventive action, with a view to the regulation of the use of the land in such a way as to facilitate the social inclusion of the families with low purchasing power through the legal access to homes.
During the development of the Guarapiranga Programme it was possible to update a series of concepts that make up the framework of a new form of urban management and, more specifically, its environmental spin off. The study of successful experiments in slum upgrading reinforced the idea of the possibilities and limitations of public action.
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From this learning process it's important to highlight the concepts presented that serve as support for the preparation of future environmental policies. When decisions are based on what has been understood from experience and the specific local characteristics, among other factors, it's almost certain that the policy adopted will contribute to the success of the city, in all possible senses.
Another decisive factor for a well-realized programme being implanted in low-income areas is the recognition of the unofficial city, without identity, that doesn't achieve its integration capacity, a condition intrinsic to urban life. In this case, the Guarapiranga Programme adopted the concept of the qualification of the spaces, as defined by the architect Bohigas (1986), by the implantation through upgrading of spaces valued by the local community, that become meaningful reference points.
As a result of this learning process it's important to emphasize that the city, when understood as a privileged space for human relationships and as an eminently democratic forum, allows opposite values to coexist and be confronted, contradicting the conservative ideas of isolated groupings. This privileged role that the city takes on – a space for living together democratically – allows one to believe in the possibility of the extension of access to opportunities to all its inhabitants.
It's up to the public administration to define plans, projects and courses of action that collaborate toward the layout of the city necessary for these new times, and that has functions that transcend its limitations and answer to the needs imposed by an increasingly integrated economy. However, it's impossible to lose the importance of the place itself, which will always be the privileged space for human achievement and action.
8. Strategies for the Sustainable Planning, Financing and Implementation of a Housing Policy for Low-Income People
Of the lessons learnt with the implantation of the Guarapiranga Programme, the first and largest slum upgrading programme in Brazil financed by the World Bank, the chief among them is related to the understanding that just reacting to the challenges that the brazilian cities present is no longer sufficient; governments must think in terms of proactive policies, that anticipate a foreseeable future.
For this purpose, in 2006, the Housing Secretariat - SEHAB secured a donation agreement with the Cities Alliance¹ for the development of the project “Strategies for the Sustainable Planning, Financing and Implementation of a Housing Policy and Urban Development for Low-Income People in the City of São Paulo/ SP – Brazil”, having as its principal objective the preparation of a series of technical studies for the formulation of a Strategic Social Housing Plan.
The project arose once it was noted that the true numbers comprising the informal city in São Paulo were unknown, as was the real situation of the informal settlements, in relation to access to infra-structure and basic services, among other information; besides this, the non- existence of a classification of results from previously implanted programmes made the setting up of an archive of accumulated knowledge, the basis for any proactive action, impossible.
¹ The Cities Alliance is a coalition of international cities and organizations that finance city development projects. The Cities Alliance was launched in 1999 by the World Bank and the HabitatAgency of the United Nations Organization see: www.citiesaliance.org.
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The chief aim of the work done in partnership with the Cities Alliance refers to the preparation of a strategic housing plan; for which several studies are being prepared on the characterization of the demand for different housing requirements, the establishment of programmes and goals for attending the quantified and qualified demand and the implantation of a monitoring system of the goals established in the plan.
For the first time in the history of low-income housing policies in the city of São Paulo, the option has been taken for an integrated diagnosis, based on the inspection of all the precarious settlements in the city (favelas, irregular lots, slum tenements, risk areas, among other forms of irregularity), the surveying of the condition of their infra-structure and the drawing up of new perimeters in a system based on aerial photos from 2003.
Once this reality was recognized the System for Characterization, Classification, Eligibility and Prioritization was prepared, which allows public management to prepare specific programmes, defined by the real needs of the precarious settlements, as well as to create integrated courses of action with the other levels of government. As an example of specific action, the city's slum upgrading programme is now formatted from the scale of priorities established by the system, taking into account those that have less access to infra-structure and greater social vulnerability.
At the same time studies are being prepared by the three levels of government on housing production, lines of credit offered and aid policies, with the aim of checking the existing lines of credit and establishing a parallel between such lines and the low-income population's capacity of access to them, in other words, to produce a comparative and critical picture of the balance (and eventual distortions) between supply and demand.
Moreover, as important aids to the elaboration of the strategic plan, studies are being prepared on institutional resources (human, material, institutional, including among them the instruments for aligning with the other levels of government that intervene in the municipal housing supply) and financial resources, in such a way as to produce a significant body of information on the development of budgeting and legal landmarks that define the institutionalization of housing policies.
All the work done and information collected is stored in this system, conceived with the aim of tracing guidelines, in a collective working process with the Sehab teams, for the planning of assistance provision to precarious settlements. In this way, a procedure was set up jointly with the Sehab teams for the setting up of strategic planning, so that a culture is created and this same culture is perpetuated uninterruptedly with each new administration.
The need to increase the capacity for interpretation and analysis of the complex housing deficit scenarios demanded the building of a specialized computing system. Its basic characteristic involves the combination of conventional resources with a system of a kind that is able to process geographical information. With the ability to calculate topological relationships implicitly, the housing information may be combined with geographical, environmental, socioeconomic, political and natural variables. In this way the intervention programmes will be able to evolve toward more objective courses of action in relation to the demand.
Its development included the participation of leading decision makers. In this way, it brings various areas of human knowledge together in a multidisciplinary way. The distinct character of social work and the sensibility of the urbanist who plans for the low-income population are both enriched by bringing together geoprocessing, statistical and mathematical computing techniques.
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After making use of cartographical resources and already existing data, updating mechanisms were built into the system itself. This allowed the retrieval of the chief facts on the housing deficit. The user-friendly interface made this operation accessible to a large number of people. The result was high quality retrieval completed in little time.
It possesses various working modes. As a system of geographical information it permits navigation of the map of the city, the visualization of housing facts and figures, the design of new elements, the consultation of thematic maps and spatial analysis. Like a traditional system, it stores varied alphanumerical information on the housing reality including socioeconomic research and has the capacity to provide reports and statistics produced in real time.
As a management system it's capable of providing strategic information able to assist in decision taking in relation to the housing demand.
Based on Internet technologies, it makes access to the information possible wherever one happens to be. Together with this, it's possible to note a process of creating and strengthening partnerships with other organs around a common perspective. Another possibility for this implementation is to make access to the public feasible, who will then be able to accompany the work openly.
Continually exploring the limits of technology this system forges ahead in the creation of new ways of working. Different aspects of the housing reality are illuminated in this forward progress. The refinement of indicators and indices encourages a rereading of the housing deficit. Mathematical models provide an intervention with objectivity. Spatial-temporal analyses are integrated with visualizations of the city's surface. Interfaces permit the input of vector data with increasing ease.And all this knowledge is stored in a safe and permanent environment.
In this way, and in accord with the aims of the Cities Alliance that supports the planning of investments for the upgrading of precarious settlements, the analysis of policies and the formulation of strategies, regularization and public policy reform, the project resulting from this partnership could be a very relevant and innovative one proposed to a metropolis where important upgrading programs are in place. This project can be developed with good possibilities of success and may probably serve as an example to be duplicated.
Bibliography BOHIGAS, Oriol. Reconstrucción de Barcelona. Madrid: Ministério de Obras Publicas y Urbanismo, 1986.
BRAKAZ, José; GREENE, Margarita; ROJAS, Eduardo. Cidade para Todos. A Experiência Recente com Programas de Melhoramento de Bairros. Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento. Washington, DC. 2002.
FRANÇA, Elisabete (coord.). Guarapiranga. Urban and Environmental Rehabilitation in the City of São Paulo. M. CarrilhoArquitetos. São Paulo. 2000.
FRANÇA, Elisabete and BAYEUX Gloria (coordinators). Favela Upgrading. Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo – 2002.
MAGALHÃES, Sérgio. Sobre a Cidade. Habitação e democracia no Rio de Janeiro. Pro Editores. São Paulo. 2002.
MARQUES, Eduardo; TORRES, Haroldo. São Paulo. Segregação, Pobreza e Desigualdades Sociais. São Paulo: SENAC, 2005.
UNFPA– United Nations Population Fund. State of World Population 2007. Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growt .2007.
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São Paulo
Guarapiranga
Billings
Capivari-Monos
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Elisabete França Architect and Urban Manager
Architect and Urban Manager currently occupying the post of Superintendent of Popular Housing in the Secretary of Housing for the Municipality of São Paulo.
Twenty-five years of experience in urban planning, urban management, low income housing, slum upgrading, capacity building, community participation and project management. Engaged in assignments for both multi-lateral and bilateral donors (UN-Habitat, the World Bank and IDB), in over 10 countries of Latin America, the Caribbean,Africa andAsia.
She coordinated the implementation of the Program for Urban Recuperation and Environmental Sanitation of the Guarapiranga Basin for seven years in partnership with the State Government of São Paulo and with financing from the World Bank, involving benefit to 140.000 inhabitants through infrastructure upgrading in 140 slums.
In 2002 was invited by the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo to be the curator of the Brazilian representation in “La Biennale di Venezia – 8ª Mostra Internazionale D'Architettura” in the Brazilian Pavilion, where the theme “Brazil – Favela Upgrading” was developed.
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THE VILA VIVA (LIVE VILLAGE) SERRA AGGLOMERATE PROGRAM AND THE INTERVENTIONS OF STRUCTURING CHARACTER
Cláudius Vinícius leite Pereira¹ and Hélcio Martins Borges²
1. Abstract
This article is about the effective public policies relative to the urban problems and challenges which strike the great metropolis, focusing on the Serra Agglomerate case – the biggest villages and slums in Belo Horizonte city, capital of Minas Gerais State, Brazil.
The Vila Viva (Live Village) program is inserted in the City Hall Housing Politics that foresees interventions of structural character in the informal city (villages and slums), that is, actions that integrate the villages to the formal city through the implementing of planning instruments – Specific Global Plan, that interferes in a broad way in these communities reality, whether related to the urban and physical aspects or the social and environmental ones, their life quality in itself.
The Vila Viva start from the modern urban concept that integrates disorientated occupied areas to the formal city, at the same time that it is part of the government line in which the priorities inversion is one its marks, allowing, therefore, the social inclusion and citizenship affirmation of a big part of the capital inhabitants.
Its intervention range encompasses the environmental and urban recuperation that goes from the street and sewage restructuring, new housing constructions, removal of families from risk areas, implementation of linear parks and leisure equipment to land owning regularization. It also encompasses communitarian development actions, work and income cooperatives creation and environmental and sanitarian education activities.
In fact, the Program actions go beyond the geographic limits of the agglomerate, having consequences in all the metropolis and being a model for interventions in other communities in need.
This pioneer experience has already started to give good results. The local and surrounding reality transformation permits the viewing of a new horizon, from the differentiated approach which has become reference in villages and slums interventions, marked by the need and poverty of all kinds.
1 President-director of URBEL. Urbanizing Company of Belo Horizonte 2 URBEL PresidencyAssistant, represented it in the Metropolis Seminar inAntananarivo, Madagascar-Africa
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2. Public policies and the city transformation
Belo Horizonte Municipality is located in the Southeastern region, Minas Gerais State and is economically the third capital of Brazil. Today, according to IBGE data it is sixth in population ranking, with 2,5 million inhabitants in a 335 km² area.
Belo Horizonte is one of the first planned cities in Brazil and was founded by Aarão Reis in 1897, created to be developed within and avenue that surrounds the city and a prevision for 400 thousand inhabitants. As any state capital, and, mainly one as Minas Gerais, it has a considerably high demographic movement. From the second half of the twentieth century on, data by the IBGE research shows that the city population grew at much superior rates than the great majority of the other capitals.
People left their cities for many reasons: health treatments, retirement, studies, work search, but all reflect a main point which is the spatial question: housing, a place to live. Even if the citizen does not come with the intention of having a definite place to live, they stay on in the conditions which are possible. It is a characteristic of the simplest, humblest and economically less favored people to, if not coercively detained, occupy, however they can, the areas closest to the regional great centers: hills, environmental preservation areas and others. Therefore, a disoriented occupation which made a great transformation in the city has been observed in the last five decades. The number of invasion has increased too much and many areas with geological risks were appearing, since the majority occupies de hills.
So, in the external part of Contorno Avenue, slums and villages and the big agglomerates started to form where currently about 20% of the district population is living, approximately 400 thousand people in 180 villages and slums.
Great part of these people lived, until a short time ago, without any kind of basic survival conditions, with extremely low indexes of sewage covering, basic in all actions: water supply, sewage system collection, urban public drainage, vector control, collecting and disposal of solid residues; educational, cultural and leisure equipment and, especially health centers.
The public policies definitions were done in a unilateral way and the community did not have access to decisions as to where the public money which, most of the times was invested just in the formal part of the city that does not encompass the villages and slums.
This situation started to change in Belo Horizonte with the beginning of the popular democratic governments, in the early years of the last decade. Starting in 1994, following the participative management model which governed the city, the Municipal Law 6.508 of January 12 was passed creating the Municipal Housing System and with it the Municipal Popular Housing Policy that defines housing as “the residence inserted in a urban context, provided with infra-structure, basic urban services and equipment” –art.10 resolution II of the Municipal Housing Council.
In this context, the Municipal government started to work more intensively in these areas known as informal but defined in the Law of Soil Use and Occupation (Municipal Law 7.166 of 08/21/96) as ZEIS – Socially Special Interest Zones. All areas with geologic and geotechnical risks, public streets and green area occupation and real housing deficit, were mapped.
At this time the Participative Budget was created, an instrument that enables the organized communities decide about which enterprises interest them, which improved, above any question, the population life quality.
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One of the most important and decisive measures taken by the Municipal Administration and that set a direction to the new government's modality was the creation of the Municipal Housing System and the new soil Occupation and Use Law through the new Director Plan of Belo Horizonte in 1996. This system is formed by the Municipal Housing Council formed by public, private and popular movements for better housing entities, and the Popular Housing Municipal Fund, institution that manages all the financial resources that go to the Popular Housing in Belo Horizonte. The departments that manage the Municipal Popular Housing Politic are the Municipal Housing office, which budgets the quantitative deficit for the existing housing implementation and the Belo Horizonte Urbanization Company- URBEL that works with the housing implementation already existing, focusing on the qualitative deficit.
These are general policies of the Municipal Housing Politic: promote the access to the land and dignified housing for the city dwellers; promote democratic processes in the formulation and implementation of a housing politic; use of technological processes that guarantee a better quality and a lower cost housing; give priority to the acting forms that propitiate the generation of work and income, and, still, insure the housing politic linkage with the urban politic. The Municipal Housing Politic has the following premises:
- the slums is part of the city structure;
- the slums, in spite of showing very poor patterns, can be transformed in a suitable housing settlement;
- the urbanizing and land owning regularization must be planned and implemented in an articulated and integrated way;
New approaches to the urban problems
Objectives of the Municipal housing Politic are to invest in slums in a progressive way trying to improve life quality, decrease the municipal qualitative deficit through a planned and organized action with the community participation.
Since this paper is about the housing implementation generated by URBEL, we show the main Company actions which are detailed as follows:
- Structuring Interventions
- Slums and villages urbanization
- Management in the Geological and Geotechnical RiskAreas
- Soil Use and Occupation
- Housing Removal and Settlement
- Financial Support Raising
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Structuring Interventions
Interventions of a restructured and integrated character previewed in the municipal housing politic that promotes deep transformations in an existent housing settlement, aiming at integrating it to the city and transforming the housing conditions into proper ones.
The Specific Global Plans (PGE) is the planning instrument of this program: passed by the Municipal Law no 8.137, the Specific Global Plans (PGE) for each ZEIS should consider three approach levels: physical-environmental; juridical- legal and social-organizational, elaborated concomitantly and containing, at least:
- Survey of data referring to the physical-environmental; juridical- legal and social- organizational situations; - Integrated diagnosis of the physical-environmental; juridical- legal and social- organizational situations; - Integrated proposal of social, physical and land regularization intervention.
Since 1998, the culture that all the interventions in villages and slums should be preceded from PGE was implemented. The village that had not been contemplated with the Specific Global Plan, should still be able to conquer it in the Meetings for the Participative Budget as a pre-requirement for approval of any work or subsequent project. Therefore, there was a substantial advance and the work began to be concluded in their totality. Slums and Villages Urbanization – Participative Budget
There are popular decisions about the work plans of Belo Horizonte City Hall. It encompasses urbanization interventions, risk areas treatments, sewage system, paving, valley treatment, family's removal and housing settlement.
Management in the Geological and Geotechnical Risk Areas
The Structural Program in Risk Areas (PEAR) promotes the technical assistance to the families who live in risk areas, being of a continuous character, with actions in the physical and social areas. The program was created in 1993, aiming at diagnose, prevent, control and minimize geological risk situations.
The PEAR has the following management model:
- Centralized politic – regionalized action, with individual inspection visits carried out by multidisciplinary teams; - Shared and proximity management; - Management articulated with other municipal and state organs – GEAR; - Investment in tools for the urban planning/ results analysis: risk areas diagnoses, PMRR, semester budget balances discussed with the community.
One of the premises of the work in risk areas is the Proximity Management that focus the co-responsibility between the public power and the community through the creation of
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Soil Use and Occupation (Municipal Law 8.137 of August 27, 1996)
The Land owning Regularization Program studies the situation of land owning in slums and villages (ZEIS) and defines strategies to regularize such situation. It works based on the Soil Use and Occupation Law, with two alternatives: in public areas it makes the entitlement of them and, in private area cases promotes the use of the land actions.
The concluded processes until today have already beneficiated 9.692 families, and there are still others that have their processes being judged to beneficiate approximately 8.800 families.
There is a prevision of entitlement for more 4.500 families until 2008.
Urban Control
Participative program with an informative and orientation character whose actions view the management of the soil use and occupation process and the urbanizing work sustainability through educational actions and the application of the urban legislation in ZEIS. The carrying out of the services of support to the urban control (URBEL/ Municipal Urban Regularization Office) is done through:
- Urban Control and Inspection Methodology in ZEIS – 2007;
- Identification of out law land marking and empty areas- 2007;
- Implementation of educative and inspection actions;
- Mobilization and Divulgation of the Regularizing of the ZEIS.
Housing Removal and Settlement (Municipal Law 8.566 of 05/14/2003)
The Removal Program due to the Public Works – PROAS (Municipal passing 9.805 of 12/21/1998), created in 1995 is about a housing re-settlement monitored by the public power through inspection of the land, negotiation with owners, following up of all the transition and move. From 1995 to 2007 the program helped approximately 5.794 families.
For the residential housings evaluated under R$15.000,00 we use the monitored housing re-settlement– the buy of a housing up to R$15.000,00 with the URBEL follow up (inspection, negotiation, transaction following, move); or financial help to the family that chooses to evaluate the housing.
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In case of residential housing evaluated more than R$15.000, housing with commercial or service value, the procedure is to pay the refund amount, according to the housing evaluation.
Now the Housing Program Scholarship – provisory settlement (Municipal passing n° 11.375 of 07/02/2003), created in 2003, is about a monthly help destined to rent payment for those families removed from geological-geotechnical risk areas, social risk areas (SMAAS) or because of the works until the definite settlement. The rented housing is previously inspected by URBEL. Benefited (December 2007): 1.506 families.
With all these experiences in 12 years of Democratic Government, the City Hall went on to the greatest project of Urbanization and Re-qualification of the Favelas settled in the State up to now, and with these characteristics, it is also pioneer in Brazil. It is the Vila Viva (Live Village) – Serra Agglomerate Program – ansettlement located in the South Zone in the city, formed by six villages with a population of 46.086 inhabitants dwelling in an area of 150,90 ha. There are approximately 13.500 housings with an average per capita income of 5 to 130 dollars and an illiteracy index around the 24% house.
The communities of the settlement, together, conquered in the Participative Budget in 1999, the Specific Global Plan and in an inedited and exemplary effort, the Belo Horizonte City Hall conquered resources for the implementation of the plan in all thesettlement .
The Vila Viva (Live Village) Program, initially created for thissettlement , was afterwards implemented in other four big agglomerates of the city – Morro das Pedras, Taquaril, Pedreira Prado Lopes and Vila São José.
Vila Viva (Live Village) – Serra Agglomerate Program first experience of total implementation of the Specific Global Plan (PGE)
The main objective of the Vila Viva (Live Village) Program is the improvement of the local population life quality through environmental-urban interventions, social-communitarian development and land owning regularization.
In the Serra Agglomerate case, the biggest slumssettlement in the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Area, which has characteristics such as irregular and disordered occupations, associated to high declivities, showing serious environmental problems, risk areas, poor road system and very low sewage system indexes, a series of other problems that should have been “attacked” so that such objective was achieved.
Among the main diagnosed problems it is worth to call attention to: the existence of a very deficient level of education of the population, with a special need of child education and high school; strong traces of the environmental degradation with deforesting, garbage accumulation and sewage water thrown into streaks and streams, besides irregular buildings on the hill sides; insufficient infra-structure with a very bad basic sanitation system in the sewage system – including clandestine nets and road nets of small reach, poor housing in great risk areas with an elevated dwelling density, removal and settlement needs; lack of a proper health assistance with little preventive medicine in the communities, lack of physical space in the Health Center and lack of specialized medical exams; difficulties in access to properties with irregular and clandestine urbanization and the need to regularize land owning; high violence index and drug incidence.
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The Project - Lines of Action
The project was elaborated from seven lines of action forming an intervention of structural and integrated character. Each of these lines of action focuses on one acting area, which are: urbanity restructuring; road system implementation; environmental re-qualification; sewage system improvement; housing system restructuring; land owning regularization and social- organizational development.
The urban restructure focus on the physical and social integration through an integrating road system connecting the Villages and neighborhoods to overcome symbolic barriers creating new references and reinforcing the local identities (squares, leisure and living areas) in the limits with the neighborhoods and between them and the Villages through the implementation of a road system.
Another action is the environmental re-qualification with measures to decrease the population density, recovering the cilia forests, complementing the implementation of dams to detain the floods, extension of the local park (Mangabeiras Park) and the creation of five linear parks.
An important focus of action of the project is the amplification of the sewage system with a reinforcement of the urban cleaning intensifying the solid residues collection, the draining process which will privilege the natural flow of the waters and the cleaning of the streets; environmental education focusing on the change in individual and group attitudes, the increase in the water supply network and the unification of the sewage collecting and treatment creating new condominium nets in the interior of the squares and thalwegs.
Concerning the housing system restructuring, the project foresees the removal of 2.251 families, of these, 1.106 families will be refunded with money or the acquisition of housing, and other 1.145 families will be re-settled in the area in apartment buildings built by the City Hall. This amount represents approximately 17% of the total population that will be removed either because of the new buildings or because of the eradication of risk areas.
With this housing system restructuring, there will be a process of land owning regularization of the housings, with property entitling processes.
All the process is permeated by social-organizational development actions through: communitarian social and development monitoring which is a fundamental aspect of the interventions which promote, in all the project phases, the direct community participation guaranteeing all executed actions and works sustainability; removal and resettlement programs with social monitoring in the families removals and negotiations in the interferences of the work and construction of social-organizational development with the families that will be resettled in the new apartment buildings; sanitary and environmental educational programs focusing on the participative management, preservation, use and conservation of the leisure, sports and culture equipment, use and conservation of sewage system, draining system and urbanization works (paving, contentions, etc…), appropriation of parks, inspection and preservation of the remaining areas besides public health aspects (garbage, cleaning, animals, water), management, rational and proper use; and a program of professional qualifying that aims at diagnosing the demands and potentials of the Serra Agglomerate Communities, promote social insertion of the groups involved in projects to generate viable work and income and stimulate the citizenship practice qualifying the participant groups.
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Main interventions
Concerning the physical interventions, diverse actions will be carried out promoting improvement of the local urban conditions as well as making the access to public services possible. The widening of the streets envisage the improvement of traffic and accessibility in the village. The urbanization of alleys where there are building sidewalks, sewage and draining systems and contentions in approximately 10 km of alleys in three villages. Sewage system collection in six villages that will have its sewage drained by an official Sewage State Company. Moreover, there will be done interceptions at the streams and streaks sides to drain the sewage ending with the “open sky” sewage.
The building of parks such as Cardoso Park, 3a Água Park, 2a àgua Park, 1a àgua Park and Pocinho Park. In these parks, the streams will receive sanitation and kept in their original bed, since the sewage will be removed. The parks will be fenced, illuminated and with leisure, sports and culture equipment.
A sports center was also built with the construction of a soccer stadium with 6.000 seats and all the infra-structure that will make it possible to attend a population in terms of leisure and non-pro sports lovers.
Besides, the eradication of areas with high or very high geological-geotechnical risks areas through works of risk elimination.
Project Resources
The total cost is estimated in R$ 180 millions, of which R$143 millions are still being raised. The financing of the project will be done in three parts being the first with a R$60 million resource from Banco Nacional do Desenvolvimento (BNDES), the second R$25 millions are also from BNDES and the third of R$52 millions financed with resources from the Union general Budget (OGU) / Caixa Econômica Federal. The rest of the resource will be the counterpart of the City Hall through the municipal budget and BH-Citizenship Program.
Expected Results
Because it is a structuring intervention, focused on a broad and integrated action, the expected benefits encompass a varied range of sections with results in the urban and land owning regularization implementing the necessary infra-structure and complementing the basic sanitation implying in the reduction of diseasespropagated by water , in the elimination of the contamination of water courses receptors, in the accessibility improvement, public security improvement, housing conditions improvement, work market access improvement and communitarian development.
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Hélcio Martins Borges Civil Engineering
Sanitary and environmental engineer working effectivelly, since 1995, elaborating and carrying out the Public Dwelling Politics in Belo Horizonte City. He's been working in the creation of Municipal Laws, services and programs to be applied, and also in the application, surveillance, evaluation and works coordination.
He's the responsible for the connection between the other government levels such as state and federal, and private companies too, in order to prepare, develop and manage partnerships / technnical cooperation and financial contracts.
Coordination of multi-sectorial teams in physical and social areas, acting in several field works, including the removal and re-settlement of families.
Graduated in Civil Engineering, with emphasis in Transport Engineering, post-graduated 'Lato Sensu' in Sanitation and Environmental Engineering and Public Politics. Nowadays, he's attending a post-graduation course 'Strictu-Sensu' (Master Degree) in Civil Construction with emphasis in the environment.
Claudius Vinícius Leite Pereira Civil Engineer Expert in Geotechnics
Director and Chair of URBEL – Urban Development Company of Belo Horizonte, a body forming part of the Indirect Administration of the Belo Horizonte Municipal Prefecture, responsible for urban interventions in the city's informal settlements, involving activities related to territorial property regularisation procedures, prevention of geological-geotechnical risk, urban development and maintenance, actions connected with sewer system and mains water provision, in addition to the development of planning and resource-raising instruments and family moving and resettlement programmes and projects.
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THE FAVELA-BAIRRO PROGRAMME OF THE CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO
Fernando Cavallieri
The City of Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil (180 million inhabitants, 78% of them living in urban areas) and is also the nucleus of the country's second most extensive and important metropolitan region. With more than 6 million inhabitants, the city lies at the centre of a metropolitan periphery where more than 4 million people live, most of whom are on low incomes. Brazil is a federative republic made up of 27 states and more than 5600 municipalities, all with their own political and administrative financial independence. Rio de Janeiro is the capital of the state of the same name. Legally, it enjoys wide-ranging powers related to organising local public services, collecting taxes and formulating its own laws. In practice, however, this autonomy is subject to numerous limitations, either as a consequence of concurrent competition from the state or the union, or due to the constant lack of financial resources that developing megacities suffer from when it comes to tackling their countless problems.
Despite being the second economic centre in the country after São Paulo, the gap between the two cities is considerable. Rio de Janeiro's economy is essentially founded on the service sector (trade in goods, provision of services and public and social administration), since its industrial activity is relatively weak. The service sector contributes around 70% of the municipal gross domestic product (GDP), whereas the industrial sector accounts for the remaining 30%.
At a state-wide level, Rio de Janeiro is the undisputed leader, since its GDP represents more than 65% of the GDP of the entire state. A large proportion of the inhabitants in the metropolitan region depend directly or indirectly on the labour market, trade and services in the city.
The 6 million people living in Rio de Janeiro occupy a territory that covers a total surface area of 1171 km², which is divided by three important mountain systems—with the highest peaks reaching around 1000 m—by a network of marshes and lagoons to the south and with theAtlantic Ocean along the entire east and south coast. The population is very dense, above all in the south-east and north-east areas, which are home to approximately 80% of the city's residents. In the north-east region, the city forms conurbations with a number of municipalities in the metropolitan region, giving rise to a single, vast urban blot.
From the socio-spatial point of view, the city presents a number of different urban patterns. The centre and southern zone, consisting of middle and upper-class neighbourhoods, occupy the best natural area of the city, with beautiful beaches and mountains. This is the finest area of the city and the one of greatest appeal to tourists. It enjoys the best infrastructure, shops, all kinds of services and numerous forms of transport. There is still a significant percentage of the population that continues to live in favelas, shanty towns, despite the slum clearances of the 1960s and 70s. The main factor that led to the development of favelas was the existence of a large job market for the low-income classes, consisting mainly of jobs for domestic helps, in shops and in services in general.Around 15% of the total population of 1.8 million inhabitants live in favelas, thereby benefiting essentially from close proximity to the centre, which is where most activities requiring labour are located.
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The suburban area, with neighbourhoods that were gradually developed as the railway network spread northwards from the centre, also has a number of advantages for the low-income population due to its location. The concentration of industries in the area, as well as its relative proximity to the centre, meant that the working classes by and large lived in this sector until the 1960s and 70s, which gave rise to enormous favela complexes, some very similar in characteristics to proper cities. These neighbourhoods were also settled by a middle-class population that could not meet the high cost of homes in the south zone. Almost 20% of its 2.3 million inhabitants live in favelas, many of which, like those in the south zone, are of relative longstanding and consolidated, meaning that the cost of buying or renting a home here is high.
When the low-income classes had exhausted every possibility of settling in the favelas in the north and south zones during the 1960s and 70s, they began to move to the west zone, an area that was unoccupied and rural, resulting in the urban blot spreading still further. Given the availability of land and the flat topography, this expansion took the form of settlement known as parcelación (parcelling). This popular form of settlement differs from that of the favelas in that the inhabitants did not take over land belonging to someone else but instead purchased a plot from the owner-businessman, who was responsible for dividing the land up into parcels.
The various parcels that developed from this process were more regular in layout than the favelas but still had unpaved roads, no drinking water supply network, no sewage system and no rainwater drainage or, if they did exist, they were liable to fail. These were, in other words, areas lacking in public services and poorly connected to the central areas of the city. The west zone, which covers around three-quarters of the municipal area, is currently home to around 1.3 million inhabitants, half of whom live on irregular plots for residents on low incomes. The population density here is much lower than that found in the favelas.
In recent times, there has been considerable irregular occupation of empty land in the west region of the municipality. This has come about as a result of organised or spontaneous incursions that the authorities can do nothing to control or monitor. These are the seeds of new favelas that are home to the poorest of the poor, forced to live in dreadful insanitary conditions and amid serious environmental problems.
The Favelas
There have been favelas—residential settlements for low-income families—in Rio de Janeiro for more than a hundred years. They are home to around a million inhabitants, in other words 19% of the city's total population. They are also both the symbol and the reality of urban poverty. Many of the people living in favelas occupy houses in very poor condition that lack adequate sanitation facilities and which were built in unsuitable locations such as on unstable hillsides, river banks and marshland. In other words, they live in places that are unfit for human habitation. In addition, over the course of the last 15 years, many of these favelas have become the favoured territory of drug dealers, who defy the authorities and sow terror in the areas they have taken over.
Between 1991 and 2000, the population living in these almost 700 settlements grew at a rate eleven times higher than that of the population outside favelas, resulting in an extremely high population density of an average of 372 inhabitants per hectare. The figures from the last census show that the situation of people dwelling in favelas is considerably worse than that of residents in the city proper.
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Rio de Janeiro is the setting par excellence of the favelas: it was in this city that they first emerged, grew and became sadly famous. The favelas vary widely and also have significant internal differences. Some are true cities: they have more than 70,000 residents, contain a wide range of commercial activities and services that provide jobs for some of the inhabitants, and can supply the needs of their surrounding neighbourhoods. Others are nuclei of 50 houses or fewer that have developed very recently.
In the mid-1980s, when drug trafficking from countries in SouthAmerica to Europe and the United States grew, Brazil became one of the main transit points on this international drug trade route. Many dealers used the favelas in Rio as places to store and distribute drugs and, as a result of the cheaper prices for the end consumer, built up an active and financially very profitable market for buying and selling their products. Another factor that added to the climate of violence and criminality was the enormous range of smuggled weapons on sale, many of them high calibre intended specifically for conditions of war. Dealers in the favelas in Rio made the most of the layout of the favelas, which is suited to illegal activity, and their privileged location within the city and came to control these settlements and even to enter into conflicts with rivals over territories. Strong and ostentatiously armed, they imposed on many communities1 a form of domination based on terror and the law of the strongest shall prevail. This article does not aim to tackle this issue, nor does it propose possible solutions, but it is impossible to ignore a reality that reaches beyond the favelas themselves and has a tragic and violent impact on the lives of all the city's inhabitants, especially the poorest, as they are the ones who are most vulnerable.
A Public Policy for the Favelas
In 1992, the law was enacted that approved the new Master Plan for the City. This plan—one of the main objectives of which was to redistribute the taxes and benefits of urban development among the various segments of society in order to foster the inclusion of the very poor—prompted a number of municipal policies, among them city policy on housing. This section2 of the law laid down in broad-brush terms the aims, guidelines, instruments and main programmes related to housing policy. One of these is the programme on the urban development and territorial regularisation of the favelas.
The Favela-Bairro Programme was set up to achieve the following aims: “to complement (or construct) the main urban structure (sanitation and democratisation of accesses) and to offer the environmental conditions needed for the favelas to be regarded as a city neighbourhood”. The goals included “taking full advantage of the collective effort already made and of the constructions and services already in place; minimal resettlement; residents' support for the programme; the introduction of the urban values of the city proper as a sign of its identification as a neighbourhood: streets / squares / infrastructure / public services”.3
In 1994, the very first body in the city's history was set up to tackle this issue: the Municipal Housing Secretariat.
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To ensure that the Favela-Bairro Programme was viable in medium-sized communities, two loans, granted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), were arranged in 1995 and 2000. These loans were for a total value of $360 million and were increased by municipal funds amounting to $240 million, making an overall sum of $600 million available for the programme. The second loan has now been almost all used, while a third, already approved by the IDB, only requires the guarantee of the Brazilian federal government. The programme has so far benefited 105 favelas of average size, in other words favelas containing between 5,000 and 2,500 homes, representing some 400,000 people or 40% of the entire population residing in favelas in the city.
When the Housing Secretariat designed the form of intervention to be followed by the programme, it was seen as essential that there should first be a large-scale urban development project that would encompass every aspect of the transformation it was hoped would be achieved. The aim was to move beyond the phase of the 'project on a 1:1 scale', in which engineers and architects would go out into the field and there decide where and how minor improvement works should be done. The idea now was very different: a true transformation would demand a plan that would enable the area of the favelas to be structured in such a way that their integration with their surrounding areas and their internal organisation would resemble those of an ordinary neighbourhood. In addition to gaining residents' support for the programme, the following guidelines were established: things already in existence were to be respected; the resettlement of homes was to be minimal; and the urban features of the city proper (streets, pavements, squares, areas set aside for sport, shops, public and private services, etc.) were to be introduced. Consequently, a global urban planning project prior to undertaking the work was crucial.
So far, the Favela-Bairro Programme has been characterised by a certain flexibility as regards its component parts and by changes in its aims. Though the fundamental goal remains the same—the integration of the favelas into the city through their urban development—the scope of the interventions conducted by the programme has varied over time and from favela to favela.
In reality, there is no strict list of types of intervention for all favelas, as if there were a fixed menu based on the same concepts to be applied in the same way and in every place. Even so, care is taken to ensure that the same aims are met in every area to achieve the same ends. These aims are:
I. To equip the favelas with basic quality sanitation infrastructure that functions adequately and which the public authorities will be responsible for maintaining.
II. To promote the spatial reorganisation of the favelas by means of integrating the roads with the surrounding urban network and by opening up spaces for communal use.
III. To provide social services aimed at meeting the needs of the different age groups of the low- income population and of vulnerable groups.
IV.Toregularise the administrative, urban and legal status of private property and public spaces.
V. To maintain and safeguard services and amenities and to control land use and occupation once the work has been completed.
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The choice of the points to be implemented to achieve each of these goals is decided during the drafting of the urban development project and depends on what already exists in the favelas and on the views of the residents involved in the process. The opinions of the experts (urban planners, architects, engineers and sociologists) are also taken into account, particularly with regard to the urban development focus to be adopted. In general terms, each of the elements can include a number of points, as described below:
Sanitation Infrastructure - The implementation of works that will make it possible to build, operate and maintain the following amenities and services: water supply, sewage system, rainwater drainage, rubbish collection and street cleaning, prevention of hillside landslides, street lighting, reforestation and the planting of trees.
Spatial Reorganisation - This essentially involves connecting the favela with the surrounding road network by means of one or more roads suitable for vehicles. The engineering and urban planning solutions vary according to the conditions of the land and the existing traffic system. Examples include laying a road into the favela on the bed of an existing route; clearing space by demolishing buildings and widening existing paths; and extending a road so that it joins up with another that links to the neighbourhood road system.
In every instance, considerable attention is paid to improving pedestrian circulation. The difficulty involved in opening up roads for cars in many favelas, above all on sloping land, is also taken into account. For this reason, pavements separated from the roads (something that is virtually unprecedented in projects for favelas), railings, handrails, flights of steps, ramps, walkways, etc. are put in.
Various spaces for communal use have also been created. The most important of these are given over to sport and consist of football pitches, sports centres, multipurpose courts and tracks, tiered seating, changing rooms, bicycle lanes, etc. Squares and parks where people of different ages can spend their leisure time or use for recreation purposes are also common, as are small spaces alongside roads where benches have been installed.
Be it for the purpose of active leisure, contemplation or rest after an exhausting uphill climb, these spaces for communal use, together with the new roads opened up, restructure the urban space of the favelas by reorganising the internal traffic and pedestrian circulation system, while at the same time improving people's journeys and walks by increasing safety and security, comfort, aesthetic appeal and pleasure.
Regularisation - This involves regularising the status of the ownership of the land on which the houses in the favelas are built and the so-called 'urban regularisation' of the favela. Land in the favelas may be publicly or privately owned. In those cases where it is publicly owned, it is transferred to the residents by means of a deed known as a 'grant of right of usage', whereby the inhabitants of the plot are given full powers to use the land, even though it may legally belong to the public authorities.
In those cases where the land is privately owned, and so long as the requirements laid down in the Federal Constitution have been met (continuous possession of a single plot of land of up to 250m² without opposition for a minimum period of five years), the City Council will help residents take legal action to acquire it by means of usucapion. This constitutional instrument allows residents to become owners of the land they occupy without incurring any financial charge.
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In the case of those inhabitants who do not meet the requirements laid down by law, the municipality can expropriate land from private owners in order to then transfer it (by granting the real right of usage) to the residents.
To complete the territorial regularisation, the programme also includes legalisation in relation to the municipal urban development regulations. To this end, the territory covered by the favela is declared anAEIS (Area of Special Social Interest), a legal status related to the zoning of the city provided for in the 1992 Master Plan. The AEIS may be governed by extraordinary urban planning and development legislation, thus ensuring that the typical forms of local land occupation and construction systems are taken into account. Urban regularisation calls for various legal and administrative actions, the ultimate purpose of which is to incorporate the buildings in the favela into the legal system regulating urban properties in the city.
A number of initiatives set in motion warrant special mention: the establishment of the Alignment Projects, whereby the City Council demarcates all public places in the favela on plans, thus clearly defining the boundaries between public and private spaces. Through the use of this administrative instrument, the City Council 'encumbers' the use of the land. In other words, it establishes publicly and legally what must be used in the favela as a street, square or sports areas, which in Brazilian legal terminology are regarded as 'public assets of communal usage'.
Whereas the Alignment Project establishes the boundary between the public and private space, the Alignment and Parcelling Project defines the boundaries between private plots of land. With this second type of project, the entire area of the favela is divided into parcels, formally defining the reality of the situation: the perimeter dimensions of private plots of land. This is not a simple process, since private plots in favelas are not always clearly demarcated, they may be irregular in design and their shapes may not meet the precepts of the general urban planning regulations. Consequently, declaring favelas special areas is crucial, as it allows the creation of urban patterns that facilitate their regularisation.
One of the factors that most exacerbates discrimination against residents in favelas is the fact that they do not have a home address that can be officially recognised by the authorities, by the postal system or by commerce in general. To remedy this situation, prior to concluding the regularisation, public spaces benefiting from the programme are identified and given official names and all the buildings belonging to them are numbered.
Amenities and Social Services - The programme's social policy, which is notable for its creation of playschools for children up to the age of three, has evolved considerably since it was first set up, in keeping with developments at a national level. Given its importance for the objectives of this paper, this issue will be discussed in greater detail in a separate chapter.
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The Participation Process
Residents' participation is a sine qua non for any intervention in the favelas. The inhabitants of favelas have a long tradition of organising residents associations that then group together as federations. Historically, the level of political autonomy, the degree to which they represent their members and their capacity for forging links with others have varied considerably. In general terms, however, they have not managed to build true channels for expressing residents' interests but have limited themselves to putting pressure on governments to achieve improvements for their communities, often in exchange for political and electoral support. The Favela-Bairro Programme attempted to put an end to this form of relationship, either by instituting technical criteria governing the choice of the beneficiary areas, or by establishing a “core element that values the direct involvement of residents in the formulation and implementation of localised projects. From the moment that the process of setting up the urban project begins, the participation of the target population will increase the quality of the overall proposal taken on by the municipal authorities”.4
Mindful of the need to study in depth an interactive methodology for establishing the 5 programme's social management, the Favela-Bairro Programme Management Team formed a social policy team that advised on creating an ongoing participative process. The general aims of this work include:
-Collaborate in training for residents/citizens, since once the work is complete, they will have to take on collective responsibilities to ensure the implementation of projects of a social nature.
-Encourage residents' effective involvement in the debate on the proposals and their critical understanding of the urban project and of the works.
-Act as a link between local demands and public bodies, the private sector and civil society, thereby increasing the possibilities for setting up objective and ongoing initiatives.
The originality of the Favela-Bairro Programme, which is noted for being an open initiative, stems from the process of interaction between the various actors charged with meeting the community's demands (community institutions, public bodies and private companies). New actors keen to make a contribution to the programme or to express their interests keep appearing all the time. Given the principle that local needs can only be assessed, safeguarded and expanded by recognising that the participation of residents and their representative bodies is crucial, the Management Team developed an action plan, the key points of which can be summed up as follows:
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i.Following the contracting of the company that will be responsible for drawing up the urban development programme for a particular area, the social advice team of the Management Team prepares for the first large assembly of residents, at which the programme, the team and the company contracted to implement the project are presented. At this assembly, once the proposal of work has been presented, residents put forward their preliminary requests and the dates of future meetings are agreed.
ii.The second phase consists essentially of three workshops co-ordinated by the social advice team. These workshops are attended by the specialist staff at the City Council responsible for supervising the contracts with companies implementing the projects, community bodies, residents, members of related municipal bodies and the team from the company employed to carry out the work. The participants are grouped according to a specific theme: infrastructure, the meaning and mechanisms of the integration of the favela into the neighbourhood and the definition of social services in the strict sense of the term. The results of these meetings are drawn up in the form of the Intervention Plan (one of the products that the contracted company is responsible for drawing up), the main instrument that guides the action undertaken.
iii.In the third phase, the services to be provided, the implementation priorities and the methods for overcoming possible obstacles, be they local or of some other nature, are defined. Thenceforth, meetings with the community are specific, and in accordance with the requests put forward in the Intervention Plan. During this process, efforts are directed at all times to ensure that local demands are in keeping with the technical, financial and conceptual possibilities of the programme.
The Social Programmes
The City Council's social policy has moved towards a more integrated vision in which there is a recognition of the need to support the various segments of the low-income population by means of specifically designed programmes. This recognition resulted from an awareness of the strong links between the members of poor families arising from their complementary functions, and of the damaging impact that not providing attention to some members of the family could have on others. For example, it is essential to provide complementary support for children when they leave playschool and go to ordinary schools in order to overcome the social disadvantages caused by a social environment characterised by a low level of education and which tends not to participate in academic training.
Similarly, grandparents, who by and large care for children of school age, need to be given assistance, either through specific guidance or the establishment of Senior Citizens' Groups, intended to raise their own sense of self-esteem and to find new ways of integrating into a society that is hostile towards them.
At the present time,6 in order to comply with the provisions of the new National Policy on Social Care, which made great strides forward in 2005—by managing to unify actions, professionalize national programme management methods, identify methodologies on raising the skills of staff employed in the field, examine nomenclatures, define new criteria on distributing budgetary resources and transfer them to municipalities, and widen the care provided to the socially vulnerable population—the City Council has restructured the SMAS (Municipal Secretariat for Social Care)..
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The directives of the SMAS, which is responsible for public social care policy in the city of Rio de Janeiro, are to fight against the consequences of poverty (such as social exclusion) and to guarantee access to essential public services and policies (including education, health, culture, sport, leisure and housing), in addition to developing a policy on social inclusion for the poorest layers of the population. Since 2005, the SMAS has taken sole charge of the Brazilian Single Social Assistance System in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. The restructuring of the SMAS resulted in the creation of three sub-secretariats and a co-ordination unit accorded a special rank:
Sub-secretariat of Basic Social Protection: This sub-secretariat is responsible for social inclusion services provided to individuals and families at risk but who still have family and community ties. It acts as a preventive body in situations of risk by fostering socialisation and social and community harmony. It also takes the lead in all income-transfer programmes, which are currently very important in Brazil since they have significantly contributed to reducing the extremely high concentration of income.
Sub-secretariat of Special Social Protection: This sub-secretariat deals with individuals who are personally and socially very vulnerable. Its target population consists of children, teenagers, young adults, families and the elderly who are vulnerable as a result of abandonment, deprivation, the lack of any ties, exploitation and violence.
Management Sub-secretariat: This sub-secretariat is responsible for monitoring and evaluating planning, administration and individuals' assessment activities with a view to raising the value of staff, as well as institutional development, infrastructure and logistical control and budget planning.
General Co-ordination Unit for Monitoring Exclusion: This unit is responsible for monitoring the daily data that will help in the work of identifying the most vulnerable areas of the city.
It should be noted that by establishing these last two ways-and-means groups at the same level as the two aims groups, the Secretariat is demonstrating the importance it accords to management and evaluation tools, which are very often ignored despite being essential to the achievement of public policies.
The SMAS is divided into ten geographical co-ordination units that cover the entire municipality. These units are centres of reference and the main gateway into the social programmes run by Rio de Janeiro City's Council.
The social policy of the Favela-Bairro Programme falls within the municipal policy on social care (and employment and income generation).Action and initiatives carried out under this municipal policy, regardless of its links with the programme, are implemented in the favelas and parcels included in the programme whenever necessary.
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In the area of job and income generation
Various actions are undertaken that make up the 'Guidance on Financial Stability' programme. These initiatives focus on two particular aspects in order to:
Raise the employability of residents who are unemployed or who have an insecure job, be they young people looking for their first job, women (especially heads of households) or workers at risk of losing their job.
Identify the aptitudes and skills of people working in co-operatives, the self-employed and people running micro-enterprises to facilitate their incorporation / survival in the job market.
The Guidance on Financial Stability identifies the vocations and potential of residents in communities by means of individual interviews, drawing up their profile and directing them towards existing jobs or towards other programmes that will offer them the tools and skills they need to be able to enter the world of employment and to generate income. These programmes are intended to raise people's level of education and their professional skills, the training in co- operatives and associations, and access to micro-loans. The SMTE (Municipal Jobs and Employment Secretariat) runs a job vacancies and employment opportunities service, and acts as an intermediary between candidates and employers by co-ordinating specific programmes such as My First Job (for young adults), the Self-Employed Workers Centre and the Employability Centre (for people looking for formal jobs). Job seekers in the favelas register with the Care Units or in the mobile centres present at events such as public fairs (see the later section on the POUSOS).
A brief description of the main initiatives implemented as part of the Favela-Bairro Programme is given below:
The Increased Level of Schooling Programme, the purpose of which is to facilitate access to an educational programme and so offer the working population the opportunity to complete their primary education, given that this is increasingly demanded in the job market, as well as to offer workers the opportunity to learn new trades by providing a level of general knowledge that can only be acquired through basic education. In addition, it aims to boost the human capital of the people living in the beneficiary communities by expanding their horizons as citizens and by contributing to breaking the vicious circle of poverty.
The Professional Capacity-Building Programme, the aim of which is to raise people's technical skills and their competitiveness in the areas prioritised by the programme, thereby boosting their ability to find a job and so earn an income. By way of an illustration, courses may be run on domestic appliance repairs, services related to health and wellness, beauty, industrial clothes-making, car repairs, civil construction and computers.
WomenAged Over Forty (With Your Permission, I'm Off to Fight). The weakening of family ties and the increased cost of living have made it necessary for a relatively large group of women to find work. These are heads of households who have never worked in professional jobs outside the home. Their lack of experience is exacerbated by low self-esteem, since this group has absolutely no knowledge of the objective and subjective aspects of the world of employment. Tackling the specific independence of this group is of strategic importance: as these women are heads of households, it will also have a favourable knock-on effect on others (their relatives), thereby significantly increasing the number of beneficiaries of this process of support for these women's incorporation into the job market.
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Computer Centres. Thirty centres have been set up in municipal schools, which teach computer courses to 1440 young people. These centres have Internet access and can thus pursue activities to ensure that students are familiar with and have the opportunity to learn in depth how to use the new information and communication technologies. Consequently, these centres play a key role in generating job and income-earning opportunities.
Bright Hopes. Aimed at young people aged 15 to 24, this project is intended to improve their abilities in the realm of culture and specifically in the areas of theatre, dance, circus skills and music. The goal is to enable young people with a special talent to take it up at a professional level. Once the courses are over, the beneficiaries of this programme have the opportunity to form companies of talented professionals who are better equipped and skilled for tackling the job market.
Community Radio. The implementation and management of radio broadcasts through ten radio studios set up in schools that give pupils, teachers and the parents of pupils in the municipal education system the skills required to put together a community radio programme that is a source of motivation in all regions and communities. In the area of care for children and teenagers
The Principal Programmes are:
Playschools for Infants (from 0 to 4 years old). The purpose of these playschools is essentially to guarantee the social, physical, emotional and intellectual development of infants aged up to four who are at risk and live in severe poverty. These playschools achieve this goal by providing a social and educational environment that meets the children's own needs and those of their families. Full-time care is provided and includes four meals a day. Playschools are a factor that helps to improve the family's income, since they enable mothers to have the time to join the job market. Run since 2005 by the SME (Municipal Secretariat for Education), thereby boosting their incorporation into the educational process, these playschools for infants help to defend and support the social development of two of the most vulnerable groups affected by low incomes: very young children and women.
Outside Nursery School Hours (from 4 to 6 years old). This initiative is intended to complement nursery-school hours by looking after children in this age bracket by running social and educational activities. Full-time care is intended to prevent social harm by ensuring these children are kept off the streets, where they are exposed to all kinds of risks. Activities that improve self-esteem raise children's sense of curiosity. Their ability to think, decide and act are crucial foundations for knowledge acquisition and for the process of helping them develop as citizens.
Outside School Hours (from 7 to 14 years old). The aim of this initiative is to prevent pupils from dropping out of school or from doing badly in their studies. Early entry to the job market through moonlighting and wandering the streets exposes children and teenagers to all kinds of dangers such as drug-taking, prostitution, etc. Social risk prevention initiatives are run through activities held during out-of-school hours. These activities improve self-esteem and stimulate a sense of curiosity, a need to investigate and the ability to think, decide and act, the fundamental bases, in other words, for the knowledge-acquisition process and the shaping of young people's identity as citizens.
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These actions also aim to be of benefit to those children and teenagers who have special needs, perhaps because they have some kind of impairment (impaired mobility, learning difficulties, hearing and sight impairments or multiple impairments) or because they suffer from a mental illness or chronic disease, are hospitalised, immobilised or confined by illness at home, because they are HIV+, etc.
Training for Young Agents. This initiative is aimed at establishing the belief that young people have an important part to play. This is achieved by organising training and capacity- building for young people to enable them to act in favela communities. Using appropriate methods, this initiative sets out to train young people to exercise their rights and duties as citizens and to support activities undertaken in the areas of health, education, culture, sport, the environment and tourism, with interaction with people from different generations. In this way, these Young Agents will not only be contributing to their community to reverse the problematic social indicators, but will at the same time be fostering the development of personal, life-related projects.
Intervention initiatives to deal with situations of extreme social risk
These are initiatives intended to respond to critical social situations (street children, drug- taking, prostitution, domestic violence and teenage pregnancy) that affect a significant number of children, teenagers and their families. This is achieved through direct interventions that encourage those involved to get back together as families. It is also possible for those affected to be directed to the municipal network of 18 Reception Centres run by the SMAS.
Childhood Troupe. The return of the children and teenagers who do juggling acts at traffic lights to their families.
I Got Tired of Meaninglessness. This initiative aims to restore children's and teenagers' sense of self-esteem, as well as to establish alternatives to life on the streets. It is based on educational activities related to playing sport, leisure, culture and the revival and appreciation of affection and of family socialisation.
Conservation and Monitoring
Another innovation introduced by the programme consists of the POUSOS (Urban and Social Guidance Centres). These are state-of-the-art centres set up temporarily by the City Council in favelas as the works gradually come to an end. They are responsible for managing the transition from the old situation of an informal and irregular settlement to the new status of a neighbourhood integrated into the city. They are staffed by a small team consisting of an engineer or architect, a social care assistant and a community agent, whose job it is to guide residents on appropriate forms of land use and occupation and on how to register for social programmes. They also 'fight' to involve public agencies in conserving and maintaining the new spaces and urban amenities.
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The specialist staff at the City Council working in the field of housing have always struggled to ensure that as the favelas became developed, they should be treated by the public authorities like any other area of the city. This has always been more difficult to achieve in relation to the conservation of streets, squares, gardens and sports venues, as well as the drinking water supply networks, sewage systems and rainwater drainage. With regard to social services (education, health and social care) and street cleaning, the public bodies have taken on a much higher degree of responsibility. The system that prevailed for many years, especially around the mid-1990s, consisted of a designated secretary who acted as the 'Council of the Poor' and who was responsible for every municipal issue related to the favelas. This was flagrant management discrimination with regard to the public administration of these areas.
The philosophy of the Favela-Bairro Programme (in particular of its specialist staff) has always been to change this state of affairs by 'struggling' to ensure that other public bodies (at a municipal, state and federal level) act in the favelas just as they would elsewhere in the city. A logical consequence of this approach has been a change in attitude among residents, who have shifted from a position of political dependence to being citizens who fight in an organised manner alongside the authorities' agencies to obtain their demands.
In 2004, a major step forward was achieved when the City Council transferred the monitoring of the use and occupation of the land in urbanised favelas to the city body charged overall with this issue: the SMU (Municipal Secretariat for Urban Planning) through the POUSOS.
The official website of the SMU describes the function of these departments in the following terms:
“The POUSOS are Urban and Social Guidance Centres set up in communities in the final phase of the works of the Favela-Bairro Programme. Staffed by teams of architects, engineers, social care assistants and community agents, the POUSOS act to provide advice to residents on the importance of preserving the public spaces and amenities that have been put in place. The sector also acts in relation to the regularisation of the status of the land in these areas. The teams of the POUSOS represent the City Council in these locations.
The process of territorial regularisation in communities under the Favela-Bairro Programme begins with the recognition of public spaces. This measure is essential so that streets urbanised by the programme can have a home address and a post code and to ensure that they are recognised on the official map of the city. The POUSOS also develop urban regulations for these communities. The work done so far is already benefiting 61 areas, in which around 250,000 people live.
In order to ensure the presence of the public authorities in communities, the POUSOS are linked to the bodies responsible for waste collection and laying and maintaining the electricity supply system, the water supply network and other public services.
The team of staff at each POUSO is also responsible for providing advice on new constructions or extensions to prevent these from being erected in public areas or in places that are potentially dangerous, thereby ensuring that the street alignment is preserved. The work of the staff is also intended to prevent the growth of the favela and incursions into other land.”
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At the time of writing (July 2007), the staff employed by the 30 POUSOS consists of 17 architects or engineers, 13 social care assistants and 27 community agents.
Service provided by the POUSOS No. of POUSOS 30 No. of favelas 61 No. of homes covered 58,000 Residents 250,000
The SMU is now working with social architects to serve the population of low-income residents in AEIS (Areas of Special Interest). The goal of the SMU is to regularise the status of buildings in these areas, which do not always abide by urban planning regulations. To this end, it launched a capacity-building initiative for social architects, with the outcome that people on low incomes living in these areas can now have access to professionals in the field of architecture at an affordable price. This work has been made possible thanks to an accord with the Regional Council of Architecture and Engineering (a federal professional oversight body) that has established a special rate for AEIS (initially for irregular parcellings) amounting to 20 Brazilian reais ($0.50, €0.38) per square metre, a sum significantly below the fixed rate for this category. Social architects will produce the elevations and plans needed to legalise buildings and will also track the building regularisation process until the SMU issues the habitability certificate (the permit that allows the building to be occupied).
The Right to the City: the Payment of a Social Debt
Why is the government so determined that the goals of the Favela-Bairro Programme be met? What, in the final analysis, are the goals and what are the main intentions? There are two ideas that hold sway in official definitions regarding the purpose of the programme: to improve the living conditions of the urban population and to integrate favelas into the city.
The aim of integration is not just a physical incorporation, a spatial link between the favela and the neighbourhood, but also greater integration into society of the people living in the favelas.
The fracture in the city's urban fabric—represented by the favela—is blatant. In the older and better structured areas of the city (by and large, the south zones and the neighbourhoods in the north zone), the favelas have over the last hundred years occupied unstable land on hillsides, along the banks of water courses, marshland and areas that are difficult to get to, especially on hills. As the urban area has spread, so the neighbourhoods and favelas have come physically closer together, but there are still enormous differences between them in terms of territorial morphology, the road network and the patterns of building construction.
A kind of sudden interruption in the urban fabric can be seen on hillsides: from an ordinary street of ordinary width, steep flights of staircases, twisting alleys and narrow, unpaved paths emerge, all flanked by badly built houses that are almost always crammed hard up against each other.
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In the flat areas, the roads of the favela may be wider but they do not follow a regular course, nor are they always paved, and hence are difficult for vehicles and pedestrians to negotiate. There are no efficient drainage systems and, in cases where the favela has grown up near a river, lagoon or bay, the water's edge is often densely built up, so much so that precarious dwellings on stilts are sometimes constructed out over the water.
These ideas are always presented as if they were interdependent and this is how they are viewed. Favelas are the main loci of urban poverty. They grew up as a result of a process of territorial segregation that has prevailed to the present day, a process in which the poor were forced to live on the more unstable and inadequate land of the city, either because they were expelled from more highly desirable areas or because they were unable to settle in formal areas.
Historically, Rio society has been divided in its thinking, adopting one of two different notions. Those who are more progressive tackle the situation of the people living in favelas as if were a social debt that must be paid; those who are more conservative regard it as a problem that must be eliminated. These positions are irreconcilable and are moving into deeper and deeper conflict. For at least the last 30 years, however, the city governors have remained firm in their determination to view the favelas that are historically consolidated, located on stable land and which do not interfere with the civil liberty to pass through them as a permanent part of the urban landscape of Rio de Janeiro. The notion of moving a million people against their wishes, given Brazil's status as a democratic state, is illogical, authoritarian and technocratic. The Favela- Bairro Programme was set up with a view to making the programme a permanent government policy that was to be constantly improved on and implemented in combination with other housing solutions until it eventually came to constitute a way of dealing with the problem that would be irreversible.
Consequently, the programme emphasises that the 'Right to the City' should be extended to the people living in the favelas, this being understood as one of the fundamental rights of our time. There is no doubt that this will help favela residents to become not just inhabitants of the city but also citizens. The provision of urban services and collective amenities, the regularisation of the status of the land, the legalisation of the urban and building status, the collection of taxes, respect for the norms that govern urban life, in other words, opening up all the aspects encompassed within the list of charges and benefits of urbanisation to people living in favelas will enable them to stop being “inhabitants of the city (citadinos) and become individuals in their enjoyment of the civic and political rights of a state or in the performance of their duties to it; in other words, citizens (cidadãos)”.7
1 The presence in many favelas of armed dealers in broad daylight, as well as their near monopoly on physical force in the territory they control, is perhaps a singular feature of the Rio process not observed in other cities around the world where there is significant illegal drug dealing. Favelas are not, however, the only type of residential settlement where such practices occur, as they are also to be found in housing complexes, irregular parcels and upper-class condominiums.
2 In Brazil, master plans, which all cities of more than 20,000 residents are required to have under the Federal Constitution of 1988, are both legislative in character and a tool. They are not action plans. In 2001, a progressive urban law of wide-ranging regulatory scope (the City Statute) was enacted. Municipal master plans must be in keeping with this law.
3 PCRJ (1994). The bases of the housing policy in the city of Rio de Janeiro, decree no. 12994/94.
4 Petersen, M.L. Social policies in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro, mimeo, 1997.
5 This section is based on the document drawn up at the time by the Favela-Bairro Programme Management Team in collaboration with its social policy team. See Petersen, M.L.; Silva, E.S; Xavier, M.J.P.; Jouan, S.P. Metodologia de participação comunitária no Programa Favela-Bairro, 1997.
6 The information given here has been extracted and adapted from the official website of the Municipal Secretariat for Social Assistance of Rio de Janeiro—http://www.rio.rj.gov.br/SMAS/inicial1.html, julio/2007—and from the Favela-Bairro Programme social actions report (SMH, 2007). 7 These two definitions are taken from the most famous Brazilian dictionary of the Portuguese language, the work of Aurélio Buarque de Holanda.
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Fernando Cavallieri Sociologist
The team of coordination the Urban Development Programme for Popular Settlements in Rio de Janeiro (Favela-Bairro), co-financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), from 1994 to 1999. He is currently Director of Geographical Information and coordinates social studies and research at the Pereira Passos Municipal Institute of Urban Planning of the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro. A local government officer since 1980, he has worked as a coordinator in the fields of popular dwellings, government programming, urban planning and raising of municipal resources and finance.
He has conducted research into criminality, municipal administration, local power, urban problems and popular dwellings. He has taught several postgraduate courses related to his areas of specialisation. He has presented works at conferences, published articles in technical journals and books and participated in national and international consultation projects.
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Commission 3 Technical Training Workshop
Recommendations:
Which are the principal recommendations in order to cities could undertake projects of comprehensive regeneration of informal or precarious neighborhoods? The recommendations were aimed by all the participants and summarized by the "rapporteur" designated by Antananarivo. They were summarized in twelve points defined as priorities and good practices in projects of regeneration of neighborhoods.
1. Political will should be the first step in undertaking comprehensive regeneration of informal settlements projects.
2. Prioritise education and socio-ambient sensitisation.
3. Implementation of basic sanitation system, sine qua non condition.
4. Solutions should be framed according to each country or society and their possibilities.
5. Governments should finance social infrastructure and activities.
6. Governments should empower locals as much as possible to take up certain functions.
7. Better coordination of different actors and projects. Many projects are being carried out in the same territory without a global and transversal view. Integrate the NGO as a technical partner of the local government with the proper coordination (who does what and where – clarification of roles).
8. Cities should not only be productive but inclusive. The formal and informal city should b e integrated.
9. The comprehensive regeneration of informal settlements should prioritise the public space and infrastructure rather than the private units (housing). The improvement of public space encourages the upgrade of private housing.
10. Local demands should be taken into account before projects are conceived (participation of local communities).
11. The informal settlements should belong to the city and should be identified by its citizen's through an official address.
12. Guarantee the security of occupation of the land.
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