Fascinating. A great reminder of the entrepreneurial ingenuity that exists within cities. I'm also struck that many favela-dwellers do not hold title to their land even after a century of residency. Perhaps Brazilian law does not have a tradition of homesteading, but granting title to the underlying property through a homesteading process would create wealth and property rights, allowing for that wealth to be traded...which could be a costless poverty reduction program for Brazil.
Part of the problem is technical. From the state's perspective, there aren't always even existing parcels to recognize. In many places, authorities would need to draw property lines, or rather, talk to the residents to determine where the property lines effectively are. Importantly, within a favela, folks know who owns what and houses can get bought and sold, but that's all mediated through non-state institutions that are largely opaque to city governments.
This might be a little dated at this point, but it drives home how blind the Brazilian state is to what's actually in any given favela.
Something else I didn't emphasize as much is the nature of the official neglect. Historically, Brazilian cities have been happy to have favelas as pools of low cost urban labor (up until the point that they become sources of crime that spills over into middle class neighborhoods). To some degree, the problems of and in favelas have not been problems for the upper echelons and therefore they've been easy to ignore.
Fascinating. A great reminder of the entrepreneurial ingenuity that exists within cities. I'm also struck that many favela-dwellers do not hold title to their land even after a century of residency. Perhaps Brazilian law does not have a tradition of homesteading, but granting title to the underlying property through a homesteading process would create wealth and property rights, allowing for that wealth to be traded...which could be a costless poverty reduction program for Brazil.
Part of the problem is technical. From the state's perspective, there aren't always even existing parcels to recognize. In many places, authorities would need to draw property lines, or rather, talk to the residents to determine where the property lines effectively are. Importantly, within a favela, folks know who owns what and houses can get bought and sold, but that's all mediated through non-state institutions that are largely opaque to city governments.
This might be a little dated at this point, but it drives home how blind the Brazilian state is to what's actually in any given favela.
https://www.urbanproxima.com/p/turning-cities-into-data
Something else I didn't emphasize as much is the nature of the official neglect. Historically, Brazilian cities have been happy to have favelas as pools of low cost urban labor (up until the point that they become sources of crime that spills over into middle class neighborhoods). To some degree, the problems of and in favelas have not been problems for the upper echelons and therefore they've been easy to ignore.