BV-FAPESP: research projects supported in this Center
CEFAVELA in the Media: notícias sobre o centro
Precarious housing – favelas and informal settlements – represents a key challenge, both for academia and the policy community involved in the design and decision-making processes related to the finance, regulation, and intervention in the built environment.
The main theoretical approaches that have been developed to describe the emergence and state interventions in informal settlements during the twentieth century have been unable to catch up with the scale, complexity and multifaceted socio-environmental entanglements between contemporary favelas and cities.
The justification behind the creation of the Center for Favela Studies is to fill this gap through an interdisciplinary approach, generate and disseminate new knowledge to increase our understanding of favela dynamics, as well as the limits and potential of upgrading programs and policies in the contemporary urban setting. Its focus is on building theoretical, methodological, and empirical approaches, with a quantitative and qualitative bias, on the multifaceted and complex nature of these territories.
The Center will do so through a work plan that articulates three dimensions:
(i) Favela analytics and modeling;
(ii) Favela dynamics in critical urban studies; and
(iii) Statecraft for favela upgrading.
