ancient cities

premonition, considered them a major problem.
He pointed out that favelas should be regarded as
concrete solutions built up by an extremely
resourceful population to tackle the lack of adequate
housing. In other words, the favela is a solution
that itself provides its residents with the means
for survival in the city.
Given the great chasm between the increase in
the housing deficit and the inability of governments
to respond to the expansion in the demand
for housing, policies have emerged aimed at
increasing the access of very-low-income groups to
the full range of basic infrastructure services. The
premises of the proposals for sites and services put
forward in the 1970s and 1980s had the intention
of offering and advertising infrastructure services
at low cost. The projects also relied on people’s
own resources to build and improve their homes.
These experiments led to bolstering experiments in
self-help housing throughout all of Latin America.
The Urbanization of Favelas
The 1980s saw a major shift in policies toward the
favelas; for the first time, the urbanization of these
areas was considered a viable policy. The official
policies sought therefore to integrate these informal
areas within the city, and solutions for urbanization,
in general, aimed to transform the favela
into something more like the orthodox city. In
areas of flat-lying land, the urbanization projects
endeavored to lay out straight streets and clearly
defined blocks, with public areas separated from
privately owned land. In other words, urbanizing
was about molding the favela to the formal city.
The notion of urbanization also brought the
understanding that access to income and services
such as education and health, besides sanitation,
were fundamental to combat poverty.
Some of the solutions for providing infrastructure
in poor areas use new technological proposals
deemed as alternatives. Thus began a period of
applying alternative technologies to sanitation, cheap
drainage systems, and the use of various materials
for paving the streets. Solutions for cheaper homes
used prefabricated panels, walls of soil or cement,
and hybrid building systems. Most were purely technological
solutions without fitting into the cultural
reality of the various sites and many areas refused
alternative technologies as solutions.
Favela
The Regularization of Favelas and the
Movement for Land Tenure Rights
271
Urbanization unaccompanied by regularizing land
tenure prompted the perverse effect of great pressure
from the real estate market, which sought out
the lands of the favelas with the best locations in
cities. The consolidation of studies on poverty and
the already extensive empirical data on favelas
made it possible to understand why some previous
policies were equivocal or limited.
The residents of favelas demonstrated they were
well integrated into city life and able to get jobs in
the formal and informal sectors of the economy.
They also demonstrated they were important
agents in social movements, fighting for land tenure
rights and demanding participation in the
planning processes of cities.
It became clear that the issue of favelas was also
a political issue. Successful solutions stemmed
from strengthening the residents not only in economic
terms but also politically, through fostering
citizenship and encouraging them to fight for their
rights to participate in city life. The 1980s saw the
emergence of social movements with demands for
housing improvement, access to education and
health services, income-earning opportunities, and
physical safety.
The onset of the new century witnessed a new
approach to reducing poverty and new perspectives
on dealing with favelas in cities. The first
important shift was the recognition of favela residents’
rights to be in and remain in their places in
the city. The second aspect considered the need to
foster community organization to promote a sense
of citizenship as a means of achieving social and
economic inclusion and access to urban services.
Several countries enacted innovative legal instruments
and urban laws aimed at consolidating and
making improvements to favelas.
The New Generations of Favelas
After a century, the new generation of favelas
presents complex and diverse features. There are
good examples of favelas having been improved
and integrated with cities, as well as cases where
poverty has persisted and proved impervious to
change. In cities like Rio de Janeiro, some favelas
are associated with drug trafficking dominated by