The Neglected Favelas

The Favelas, located on the hills of Rio de Janeiro, often received dysfunctional portrayal that overlooked a dilemma to this urban phenomenon.

Rio’s favelas are large informal housing that sprawled from poor communities, which are not governed by any public authorities and do not received much of the public services. Despite the neglection by the city government, Favelas are self-sufficient urban area that heavily rely on the communities within. The people of favelas created public associations that prompt many creative ways to ensure favelas’ functionality through impromptu solutions and resources as a way to survive without having a formal governance over the area.

The absent of city governance in Rio’s favela allows drug gangs to form territorial governing bodies within different areas of favelas. Rio city government have tried to retake the favela through a program called pacification yet it is not very popular among the communities due to the issue of police brutality that engulf the program.

It becomes a question of responsibility over the governance of an urban area that is build on a bottom-top scenario. The applied top-bottom solution provided by the city government are yet to be fully functioning, which could suggest a flawed notion in applying top-bottom solution in a bottom-up environment.

Could a technological solution relieve some of the problems favelas are facing? It is very interesting to see the extent that data science can assist in providing better understanding and solution of informal housing, where data science may provide a top-down view of the urbanism in favela but having it corporate bottom-down solution could become a real challenge.

Vox report on the favelas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3BRTlHFpBU