Social and cultural responsibility is returning to the forefront of contemporary architecture. Although architects and planners have addressed informal settlements, or favelas, for over sixty years, it is only recently that there has been a shift in the paradigm. Initially consisting of eradication and relocation, self-help and public housing strategies, "slum upgrading" ¹ has evolved to encompass strategies usually characterized as urban acupuncture, aiming to minimize displacement while at the same time attempting to better the conditions in the area. We are now witnessing spectacular libraries in depressed neighborhoods, cable car systems in marginalized areas, and museums in informal settlements. Following the long history of tabula rasa schemes, and based on the foundation of Team 10 and urban theorists and practitioners such as Castells, Perlman, and Turner, favelas are no longer being vilified and viewed as cancers to cities and society. Quite the opposite, through interventions that acknowledge and legitimize informality’s architectural and urban potentials, designers have begun to adopt the favela as a new paradigm, a paradigm I am calling Favela Chic. With design as a central component in configuring, Favela Chic interventions have accepted the notion "slums of hope," ² viewing informal settlements as integral components in the growth and development of the city, and thus reformulating the discourse of the growing city, its configuration of built form and social activities, and the relations between the global and informal.

Seeking to minimize displacement while at the same time integrate the favela with the city, current interventions acknowledge auto-construction as a legitimate way of providing housing, and instead focus on the aspects that are absent in the settlement: infrastructure, public space and public equipment. Although ranging in types and scales, from small acupunctural projects to expansively designed infrastructural networks, I have identified seven common architectural tools based on comparative field studies in South America (Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela): Plug-in Services, Urban Connectors, Icons, Skin+Sign, Dirty Works ³, Housing/Relocation, and Tectonic Uplift.

Plug-in Services: This tool focuses on improving basic services, utilities and sanitation (electricity, water, black water treatment and waste collection and recycling).

Urban Connectors: Focusing on access and mobility, Urban Connectors include infrastructure of transportation systems (monorails, elevators, cable cars) as well as circulation networks, such as transit stations, paths, stairs and promenades.

Icons/public equipment: These are formal markers and nodes within the city (formal and informal). Consisting of mostly public programs and interventions, this tool creates or reinforces the collective identity of the area. Icons include museums, libraries, gymnasiums, schools, kindergartens, and community centers.

Skin + Sign: Aesthetics and imagery drive this tool. Focusing on the application of paint, ornament and imagery to the exterior of buildings and structures Skins + Signs attempts to beautify the existing area.

Dirty Works: Dirty Works encompasses specific landscape designs dealing with the sustainability of the ecosystem, including reforestation, river restorations, land slide prevention and recreation areas.

Housing: Although Favela Chic interventions attempt to minimize displacement, relocation is still essential, in order to accommodate the interventions and manage risk areas. Whereas the provision of housing is not the priority here, it remains a necessary tool in the approach. In this regard, we primarily find mid-rise structures, varying from in-situ and off-site projects.

• Tectonic Uplift: This tool involves technical assistance, as well as structural enhancement or adoptions applied to existing or new constructions. Tectonic Uplift is not as prevalent on a larger scale and appears to not be an integral part of Favela Chic interventions; nevertheless, there are still some noticeable examples, including support and infill strategies. ⁴

Even though many of these interventions are so recent that their real impact is not yet discernable, conversations about key issues and questions, as well as short- and long-term outcomes of the interventions are critical to further the discourse and practice:

How are these interventions operating? What is the context and framework, in which projects are planned, executed and maintained? Currently, some of the most interesting efforts to address favelas are exemplified in Latin America. Significant reasons for this include the political and economic dynamics taking place in the region, where economic growth, decentralization and democratization processes have allowed stronger local autonomy in urban development projects and emphasized a desire to reflect citizen rights through city form. Some key factors to acknowledge within the framework include:

• Local conditions (history, demography, geography/topography, geology and climate),
• Actors (independent professional/architect, state government, local government, NGO, multilateral agency, community)
• Funding (public sector, private sector, private-public partnerships, NGOs, multilateral agencies)
• Government structure, programs + policy (centralized vs. decentralized, national vs. local, top-down vs. bottom-up, levels of institutionalization, etc.)
• Regulatory and legal processes (including zoning and tenure)
• Precedents + Models (past and present theories and practices)

Where exactly are these interventions operating, in other words, what defines a non-formal settlement, or informality in a specific context? The definition of informality is extremely contextual and dependent on place. I would argue that there is not only one type of "informality" but various "informalities," surpassing generalization of geography (First and Third World, periphery and core, etc.), poverty, inequality, illegality, marginality, isolation, nor resistance. Informality is not a product but a process, constantly in the making, shifting and redefining relationships (in may cases dependent and essential) with the "formal". ⁵ Contingent on this, the strategies, morphology, spatial organization, aesthetics, structure, and uses emerge from the constraints and limitations of the formal system, or asfalto, and as such should be understood in parallel to it.

Will projects be received and used in the same manner in different areas and situations? When we speak of use, we also speak of associated socio-economic outcomes. For example, will the impact of a Metro Cable in Caracas or Medellin be the same in other places? Cultural specificities, in addition to the politics of place with its particular socio-economic dynamics, set up very different conditions and value systems that are embedded within the urban fabric. Although physical challenges might be similar from place to place, the manner in which these challenges are addressed needs to be very specific to context.

What defines integration and what is the real impact of these interventions? What are the structural limitations of a purely physical intervention? What does it mean to insert a formal intervention in a non-formal city? Are these long-term sustainable solutions?

As the Favela Chic paradigm gains traction, we, as responsible architects and planners, need to analyze the economic, cultural, social and political implications of these formal physical interventions in informal settlements, particularly as they tie into larger, global systems. We need to understand and evaluate the impact and use value of our strategies and interventions to avoid falling for the danger of adopting an image of social good instead of addressing the social and economic realities of everyday life.


Footnotes

¹ UN Habitat, Slum Upgrading Facility. http://www.unhabitat.org/categories.asp?catid=542 A slum, as defined by the United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure." The term "slum" is too freely used as a term to group all squatter and informal settlements. Although slums are usually informal settlements, not all informal settlements are "slums". In this same respect, informality is not necessarily equivalent to squatting. This generalized definition of "slum", also adopted by Mike Davis in "Planet of Slums" (2006), homogenizes and stigmatizes all non-formal shelter practices. The urban poor now have to deal with another form of social exclusion and many of these working and living neighborhoods, and communities, are reduced to eviction and demolition.

² Contrary to the recent point of view provided by Mike Davis’ "Planet of Slums," Perlman has long argued that urban residents labeled as "marginal" are not in fact disenfranchised form the city but are very much part of urban society contributing to the formal economy and continuously striving to improve their lives. Perlman, Janice, "Six Misconceptions about Squatter Settlements," in Development, Journal of the Society for International --Development, l986: 4, pp. 40-44.

³ The naming for the tool ‘dirty works’ was taken from the GSD landscape architecture exhibit. Beardsley, John and Werthmann Christian, Dirty Work Exhibition, Harvard Design School February 2008

⁴ John Habraken and SAR (The Dutch Foundation for Architectural Research) have, throughout the last three decades, influenced the design and production of alternative forms of mass housing. Habraken’s "supports", deal with the infrastructure and the provision of services- "infill"- which deals with the plan layout and possibility for expansion, leaving room for to the accommodation and experimentation of the dweller. Habraken, John, Supports: An Alternative to mass housing, and The Structure of the Ordinary: form and control in the built environment.

⁵ Castells, Manuel and Alejandro Portes, "World Underneath: The Origins, Dynamics, and Effects of the Informal Economy" in Alejandro Portes, Manuel Castells, and Lauren A. Benton, Eds., The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Advanced Developed Countries. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.