The two cities
Urban hybridization in the edge of Brazilian cities

Renata Satiko Akiyama

PhD student
Politecnico di Milano (Polytechnic of Milan, Milan, Italy)

Abstract:
In the last decades, European cities have been observing the opening out of its limits, characterized by the spread of settlements, the rise of infrastructure and the leap from urban to territorial scale. The city, once described as a compact urban structure where it would be possible to distinguish a linear and hierarchical passage between center and periphery, nowadays is fragmented. In developing countries, particularly in Brazil, this phenomenon diverge in scale, reason, intensity and form. In general, rapid urbanization, low income, real estate market forces, inappropriate regulation and bad governance have determined an accentuated sprawling of squatter settlements (a.k.a. favelas) along the city's border. Over the years, city and favela have been growing and living side by side autonomously and, even when one area touches the other, their mixture has never happened. Between these two cities there is an invisible wall, a space without meaning and full of differences, characterized by degradation and depreciation. To revert this situation, urban and architectural projects have been promoting the hybridization of these spaces with interventions that combine city and favela, regular and irregular settlements, order and confusion. Considering these issues, the paper analyzes the spatial changes in the space between city and favela derived from urban and architectural design, evaluating the characteristics that have permitted the construction of an hybrid space in the city edge.

Key words: favelas upgrading, squatter settlements, hybridization.

Space of contradiction
The dynamics that produce the urban form in the developing world do not usually show the classic Chicago School (1) pattern which asserts that cities would take the form of five concentric rings and, according to "ecological" competition, areas of social and physical deterioration would be concentrated near the city center and more prosperous areas would be located near the city's edge. In those countries of recent urbanization, the shape of city (amorphous and polycentric) has been determined by economic, social and spatial forces that impel poorest people to live far from the city center where land is affordable (2).
In Brazil, the peripheralization of the metropolitan areas has been evident since 1980, growing faster in the following decades. In the explosive context of metropolitan growth, late investment of city halls in instruments of territorial regulation, real estate speculation, absence of investments in housing for central areas, abundance of residential lots in the periphery, impoverishment of people and facility of public transportation have caused people migration to city's edge. In a circumstance of relative shortage of urbanized land at accessible prices, the poorest residents will occupy despised areas by the real estate market, areas where occupation is vetoed by environmental legislation (hillsides, edges of rivers, swamp areas etc), hiding places and public areas (3).
This segregation process reveals the formation of favelas (slums), areas characterized by situations of structural and geological risks, flood, lack of infrastructure and basic public services (public transport, sanitation, energy, drainage, streets, health, education, culture etc) and residents with low income and low education level. It means that, if in the central areas the fundamental urban structure is already there to the future resident's disposition, in the peripheries to rise up a house is just the first steep: residents will need to fight for a basic urbanization. From this evidences, it is possible to assume that the term segregation has a broad range in favela and includes territorial, social, economical, environmental, juridical and cultural exclusion.
Frequently, these areas of spontaneous settlements display a chaotic scenery, but in spite of the apparent disorganization and the spontaneity of its layout, the favela landscape is determined by a logic of production and appropriation of the space. In morphologic terms, the favela layout is formed by a mosaic composed by irregular blocks that usually diverge from its surroundings, plots that seem not to have access, discontinuous streets and shapeless open spaces. In those places, the formal stability of the planned city becomes modification, decomposition and mutation.
In the largest Brazilian cities like Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, more than 1/5 of the residents live in favelas. Salvador, Fortaleza and Recife have worst situations, from 1/3 to 2/3 of the city's population live in squatter settlements. Even Curitiba, known by its early urban planning, has a "ring of favelas" that practically surround the whole municipal area.

Designing for Integration
Since the forties, Brazil has developed methods and practices for intervention in squatter settlements. In general, it is possible to enumerate three types of actions: the first one, desfavelamento ("disfavelization"), corresponds to the complete elimination of the favela; the second type,reurbanizacao (reurbanization), represents the removal of the whole existent structures and its substitution for a habitative model, eliminating all spatial and formal references of the favela to their residents; and the last one, urbanizacao (urbanization), represents interventions of infrastructure improvements, supply of public services, installation of public equipments and housings constructions, preserving the local spatial characteristics of the place. The complexity of environmental, social, space and form situations found in each favela involves the partial, integral or combined application of each one of the three typologies.
From the first Brazilian initiatives until now, projects and policies approach to squatter settlements have changed. The accumulation of experiences and the change of position in front of the favela reality have produced, particularly after the nineties, a group of projects that crossed the objective of physical improvements to reach the effective urban requalification and the favela spatial integration to the city. From these experiences, new urbanization patterns have appeared. Instead of functionalist, orthogonal and mandatory design, projects seek to take advantage of potentials and previous spontaneous forms of these areas. By these means, urban form cease to apply for an ideal prefigurabile design to be coincident with many connections and complex settlements in which the historical memory remains impressed.
The favela Bairro program, promoted by the Rio de Janeiro City Hall, is a benchmark for this new perception of design. The concept of their projects has consisted in breaking the barrier between "legal city" and "informal city" through upgrading, improving and giving form to the existing city, rather than starting a new layout from scratch. Besides infrastructure and services facilities, architecture was fundamental to connect city and favela by introducing landmarks to reinforce identity, giving form and sense of order to no-places, creating spaces of interaction to promote social cohesion and claiming beauty to forgotten areas. The renowned favela Bairro's project was designed by the architect Jorge Mario Jauregui (4) for Fernao Cardin, a favela in Rio de Janeiro surrounded by the railroad, the Dom H. Camara Avenue, the Yelow Line viaduct and crossed by Faria river. A complex and common morphology of Brazilian squatter settlements. The project recognized the characteristics and the scale of the place and took advantage of site potentials, creating a linear centrality capable to embrace the whole favela and connect it with neighborhood. Along the both sides of Faria river was designed an area with facilities for sport, communal services, commercial locals and relocation unites, creating an urban "continuum" where the broken city, dissolves.
According to Jaregui, design for favelas integration "involves the formulation of a strategy space (directed through projects of urban structuration) and of a social strategy (based on the mobilization of the inhabitants searching for their participation in the programs definition and in the accompaniment of the process as a whole) (...). It is about the creation of "centrality poles" capable to extend the urban effect to the adjoining areas, connecting and integrating the favelas to the district neighborhoods. Thus, places constituted without planning will acquire by the interventions, an urban responsibility" (5).
Guarapiranga Program in Sao Paulo is another example of slum upgrading that recognizes the favela as an intrinsic part of the city and not only a temporary phenomenon. The projects for Jardim Floresta and Jardim Imbuias, favelas located in fundamental areas for the metropolitan water system, were part of this program. Designed by the architect Paulo Mello Bastos, the projects have sought to foster spaces where the community could recognize as their own and places that promote opportunities to strengthen cultural identity within the urban context. To achieve these goals the projects have preserved the morphological characteristics of the sites, using existing elements as much as possible, while creating a system of secondary and main streets, designing public spaces and providing the penetration of city into favela.
None of these interventions has drastically modified the urban form of these places, for that reason it was possible to preserve original space references, history and the familiar relation with favela. Instead, urban design has improved existing spaces articulating them with new elements, trembling the homogeneity of places and adding rhythm to favela's environment.
Following the programs of favela Bairro and Guarapiranga, many Brazilian cities have embraced the policy of integration as corner stone of their upgrading projects and a range of different architectural and urban solutions were created. These initiatives, usually promoted by Municipalities, have recently received support from Federal Government by a plan called "Growth Acceleration Program" (PAC). Since the beginning of 2009, with the launch of this program, a huge number of favelas has been passing through a process of requalification and regularization all over the country. To represent this new generation of favelas upgrading projects, three case studies can be analyzed: Complexo Manguinhos and Complexo do Alemao from Rio de Janeiro and Paraisopolis from Sao Paulo.
The first project, Complexo Manguinhos, involves an informal occupation located in the North part of Rio de Janeiro, characterized by an expressway, main avenues, a river and a railway line. These urban components correspond to a barrier dividing the area in disconnected fragments and isolating the community from the city. Nowadays, for these characteristics and the high level of violence and crime, the area where the Oswaldo Cruz Park would be settled is now recognized as "Gaza Strip".
The main objective of the project was to connect the informal residential sector with its boundaries and the city. To achieve this goal, the railway was elevated and a new 24 hours multimodal transportation (train, bus, taxis, moto-taxis, vans, bicycles) was designed together with a linear public space, placed above the rail lines. This area, composed by buildings for cultural and commercial activities conjugated with a walkway road, links the favela to a Civic Center with public services, cultural and sportive buildings. To complete the project, along the railway new blocks of housings delimit the linear park and create a limit between this area and an industrial zone.
The combination of interrelated elements (linear public space, new housings, multifunctional area and rail station) removed existing barriers and generated new centralities which attracts the favela residents as well as a larger public from its surroundings. After this projects upgrading projects have reached a global scale. The design, formerly focus in interactions and conjunctions between favela and its surroundings, now aims to increase the role of favela inside the whole urban context. Another similar project for the favelas of Complexo do Alemao is focused in a cable system for transportation of people which articulates 13 favelas among them and with the city urban transportation. The cable system has considered the demographic and topographical characteristics of the place, offering reduction of trip time and mobility without pollutant. The six cable stations are conceived as "Social Stations" and, besides its transport services, it includes social and public services (library, judicial support, urban and social assistance, work and business training etc). Around each station it will be designed a public space with green area, leisure equipments and urbanization of streets to guarantee access and avoid further informal occupation.
Besides accessibility, centrality and sustainability have made part of the design concept. It will be implemented a Civic Center in the old Poe'sie industry with health, job and business training, young orientation and housings. Another centrality will be generated by a green park, placed where first were three stone quarry areas. All these interventions put the Complexo do Alemao in the Rio de Janeiro scenario not as a favela but as sub- center of public facilities, leisure activities and civic assistance. Analyzing the last project of Paraisopolis, the second largest favela of Sao Paulo with 60.000 inhabitants huddle in 100 hectares, it is possible to identify another remarkable transformation. In terms of its morphology, Paraisopolis diverge from its surroundings due to the density of its occupation, the general preservation of the original main streets of Marumbi Farm plots, and the strong contrast to the closed condominium towers of the immediate neighborhoods.
One interesting project of this program is the Manuel Antonio Pinto staircase, a system of stairs and green surfaces that has produced a strong spatial and visual connection between Marumbi neighborhood, placed in the top of the hill, and the favela, isolated in the valley. This intervention intend to integrate the informal, irregular and precarious city with the 'legal' city and re-establish environmental equilibrium in the city. With the project, both sides should be seen as one unit and the fluid connection of the two sides should be reinforced by common surface treatments and programmatic combinations. The revelation of this project is in fact its complementation, which is not promoted by the Citty Hall but by community. In the future, another project designed by SUBdV will complement the actual structure, adding a new building for the resident's association with sportive and cultural areas spreading itself uphill to the highest point where Morumbi neighborhood is located. After its conclusion, the whole project will form a continuum space that take part of the topography to shrink territorial segregation.

Searching for Hybrid Space
The favela is an inherent urban reality with which architects and urban designers must confront. Neglecting the urban dynamics will increase a city problem, not just related to the periphery, but the whole urban context. The segregation promoted by this phenomenon is visible in the morphology of urban space and it is in the contact areas between these two realities (planned city and spontaneous city), where social-space disparities are emphatically exposed, that the architectural and urban design should intervene. The historical background of the previously mentioned projects allow us to individuate some characteristics that upgrading projects should have for the construction of hybrid spaces. The main technical aspects which architects should take notice are: feasible infrastructure that guarantee geological stability, potable water, sanitation, drainage, accessibility, energy and public illumination (it would require specific technologies and adaptations); incorporation of public services and equipments; construction of housings and land regularization. Those are the first step to transform favelas in an integrated part of the city, recognized by its residents and incorporated into an evolutionary process similar to any normal neighborhood. Another important dimension in favelas upgrading projects is the physical-spatial context. The respect for the urban space produced by the residents, full of symbolic elements and affectivity with the space, should be considered in the process of orientations, transformation, adaptation and definition of spaces. The relationship of the population with the designed space becomes the key element for the effectiveness of urban requalification. Therefore, the urban and architectural design should make possible the improvement of spaces used in daily life and should act positively in the citizen's self-esteem. In this sense, the connective public space assumes a fundamental role once they become capable to reinforce the existing centers and to propose new coexistence centers with symbolic value as bases for variety activities, acquaintanceship and social exchange. The design process must combine architecture with local logic conditions, recognizing peculiarities in which the interactions of physical, social and formal factors lead to identify points of references in the space. To conclude, every favela is unique and immerse in a great complexity. It is possible to individuate the minimum technical elements and to point fundamental procedures that a project should have. Hence there is no one-fits-all formula to favelas upgrading projects and a tailored approach must be elaborate for each one. Far away from standard architecture, the concept is to identify singular elements and local characteristics and combine them with creativity, beauty.

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(2) UN-Habitat 2003.
(3) Bonduki 1999, Kowarck 1979, Santos 1993, Villaca 1998.
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(5) Jauregui 2005.

01
Two Cities
BRAZ PINHAS - RIO DE JANEIRO



01/a
Design for Hybrid Spaces
FERNAO CARDIN - RIO DE JANEIRO

02
Two Cities
NORDESTE - SALVADOR



02a
Design for Hybrid Spaces
PARAISOPOLIS - SAO PAULO




03
Two Cities
CAPINZAL - BELO HORIZONTE



03a
Design for Hybrid Spaces
COMPLEXO MANGUINHOS - RIO DE JANEIRO




04
Two Cities
PARAISOPOLIS - SAO PAULO



04a
Design for Hybrid Spaces
COMPLEXO DO ALEMAO - RIO DE JANEIRO




05
Two Cities
TATUQUARA - CURITIBA



05a
Design for Hybrid Spaces
JARDIM IMBUIA - SAO PAULO

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