Brazil's Favelas: 17.9 Million People Living in Informal Urban Communities
Brazil's favelas (informal urban settlements) are predominantly centred in big cities like Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Salvador, and Brasília, housing around 17.9 million people (8-9% of the country's total population). Favelas arose in the late nineteenth century when previously enslaved Africans, libertos (freed slaves), and rural migrants unable to afford formal housing inside city limits created informal colonies on available property (usually steep slopes unsuitable for commercial development). The Portuguese term "favela" comes from the Morro da Favela (Favela Hill) in Rio, where a substantial community developed around 1900. These villages initially existed outside of government acknowledgement, with no access to sewage services, electricity, water infrastructure, or police protection—conditions that endured for decades despite the expanding populations.
Contemporary favelas continue to face enormous obstacles. dwellers face acute poverty: the 2023 research "A Country Called Favela" discovered that around 72% of favela dwellers would deplete their little savings within one week of being laid off. Many people labour in the informal economy (street selling, domestic service, and casual labour) with no job contracts, benefits, or income stability. According to a 2005 Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) report, around 28.5% of Brazil's urban population does not have access to public water supply, sewage systems, or garbage collection, with slum residents facing much worse conditions. Most dwellings are built with scavenged materials that lack structural strength, leaving them vulnerable to flooding, mudslides, and collapse. Dense occupancy (some favelas have over 60,000 persons) makes infrastructure retrofitting extremely complex. Police violence, gang activity, and drug trafficking create unsafe conditions in which inhabitants are frequently subjected to arbitrary violence with no legal redress.
Reform initiatives have yielded mixed outcomes. Rio de Janeiro's Favela-Bairro Project (started in 1993) sought to improve favela infrastructure and integrate communities into the urban system. The program provided locals with training and free materials, as well as support for community groups working to improve their neighbourhoods. The city negotiated 99-year land use rights for residents on publicly held land, ensuring property security. During the earliest phases, the project reached 620,000 people in 168 communities. Yet serious challenges persist: while consumption, household goods, and educational attainment improved over three decades, simultaneously, unemployment and inequality increased. The pandemic had an especially devastating impact on favela communities, where residents could not afford social isolation and continued to work despite COVID-19 risks, with infection rates three times greater than in affluent neighbourhoods. Contemporary approaches increasingly recognise that favelas are communities deserving of dignified infrastructure and genuine participation in urban planning, marking a shift away from earlier paternalistic approaches and towards collaborative models that value resident agency.
