Estrutura social

Urban Latin America has become synonymous with violence and insecurity. Whereas levels of violence since 2000, in terms of homicide rates, dropped everywhere else in the world, Latin America and the Caribbean were the exception. Often, efforts to explain this make a connection between poverty, crime, and violence that finds its typical representation in peripheral urban areas: shanty towns. This paper challenges such one-dimensional assumptions by critically examining the complex nexus between violence, insecurity and urban space in urban Latin America. We will define contemporary urban violence in the region and discuss its key characteristics and explanatory factors. Then, we will examine the socio-spatial dimensions of violence and insecurity in three domains: the linkages between criminal gangs, drugs, and violence in peripheral areas; the impact of violence and fear on the strategies of seclusion employed by specific social classes; state responses, especially policing, to show how regimes of public security are differentiated in socio-spatial terms. We will argue that these differences reflect differences in citizenship status and citizenship subjectivity, between the privileged and the excluded. This in turn generates bottom-up responses by urban residents that take matters of security and law enforcement in their own hands.

This study investigated the mobility patterns of favela residents based on an analysis of their daily movements derived from high-frequency mobile phone data. Daily movements were measured considering the distance traveled at different times of day over the course of more than two months. Potential trip purposes for the most frequently visited locations were inferred based on land use data from property taxes. The high volume of geocoded data from mobile phones enabled the analysis during multiple days, also covering weekends, usually not considered in traditional transport surveys. The mobile phone data indicated that, on average, favela residents go farther from home during business days and perform less out of home activities during weekends when compared with non-favela residents. Further, distinct patterns for favelas and non-favela residents were mapped, considering different geographical areas, revealing space and time mobility inequalities.

Studies of urban development, and specifically studies of urban inequality, have tended to neglect the role of young people. While development studies more broadly have begun to take young people's experiences, perceptions and practices into account, research on urban development and inequality has remained largely focused on adults. This lack of attention to young people is all the more surprising given the large percentage of urban residents in low-income countries that is under 25. Drawing on research in Rio de Janeiro's Zona Sul, this article argues for including young people in debates on urban development and urban inequality. It argues that a relational approach, juxtaposing the views and experiences of both rich and poor youth, is especially valuable in this regard, as those studies that have paid attention to youth, development and inequality tend to focus on low-income youth living in informal settlements. Based on mixed-method research with adolescents and youth (age 14e24) from both low-income and high-income areas, the article analyses young people's socio-spatial perceptions and practices. The research highlights that both groups experience urban inequality and insecurity as major and interrelated development problems, and that these issues affect their opportunities and quality of life, albeit in different ways.

Emerging from the global city literature of the 1980s and 1990s, a vast scholarship has developed that embraces the ‘dual city’ concept as a useful analytical tool for explaining how global transformations produce polarization within cities. However, less is known about how local policies shape uneven patterns of development. Through an examination of Rio de Janeiro's Favela Pacification Program, we argue that state-level public policies play a significant role in institutionalizing duality. The recent military occupation of the slums in Rio de Janeiro demonstrates how the historically and politically contextualized public policy of confrontation has exacerbated tensions between the city's elites and poor residents along a number of social, economic, and political dimensions. Local policymakers can influence the impact of globalization on social polarization by considering the effects of public policies on spatial justice.

The Sustainable development goals (SDG) aim for reducing poverty (SDG 1) and to upgrade all slums (SDG 11). The first indicator in SDG 11 describes the proportion of the urban population residing in slums. However, the currently available data is based on national estimates that follow globally varying methodologies and concepts. In this paper, a uniform approach is implemented to obtain slum population estimates in eight different cities from three continents. The approach relies on earth observation datasets on the spatial extent of the slums and one of the most accepted gridded population dataset: WorldPop. The results shed light on the distribution of population in slums around the world. Nevertheless, the question of the accuracy of these population numbers arises. Therefore, a broad range of literature data containing population counts is gathered for the cities investigated, for varying years and for different spatial scales. The literature data is compared to results obtained by the presented approach. The comparison yields a plausibility assessment for different cities, indicating varying levels of deviation. We find in all cities a clear bias in estimating the slum population - mostly underestimations -, even though some cities reveal a significantly better fit to the data. In conclusion, this study provides a methodology to systematically assess the accuracy of globally available datasets in the context of slums and thereby to highlight the large uncertainties which can empirically be observed.

With over half of the world's population living in cities, and with rising consumption, the generation of solid waste has become a ubiquitous and serious problem in urban agglomerations. City administrations are facing social, cultural, environmental, and economic challenges when planning solid waste solutions. The paper discusses the participatory epistemology and methodology experience resulting from inclusive solid waste management in Brazil. In the global South countless informal and organized solid waste collectors are engaged in resource recovery, classification of discarded waste, and redirection of recyclables towards the recycling sector. Their work is mostly unrecognized and the service is not remunerated. Governmental support to include recycling cooperatives in selective waste collection varies significantly in scope and quality. In theory, the Brazilian solid waste management legislation supports recycling cooperatives and promotes avoidance, reuse, and recycling as a primary solution tackling waste. In praxis, however, many challenges towards inclusive resource recovery and awareness building about waste avoidance and diversion are yet to be overcome. Action-oriented, participatory qualitative research, conducted with recycling cooperatives and local governments in the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo, has revealed some of ~ the environmental and social contributions, as well as challenges arising in planning, policy design, and implementation of waste management. The research applies a feminist and post-colonial theoretical lense and demonstrates a wealth of knowledge co-generation on waste management. The participatory method underlines important social aspects to consider in planning and policy design for inclusive waste management. The final conclusion of this paper is that selective household waste collection with recycling cooperatives creates unique opportunities to build more inclusive and cleaner cities.

This paper evaluates a technical assistance program for house self-builders in the region of the city of Campinas, Brazil. The assistance given is in the form of an individualized house design, distributed to selfbuilders, based on an automated computer aided design (CAD) generated design method. A case study is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the assistance program. The transfer process of a population from an environmental protection area to a new location and their need for rapid house construction is the specific case presented. Houses are evaluated as to satisfaction and environmental comfort conditions. As a result, lessons are learnt about assistance programs and their success in improving housing quality.

Overcrowding in informal housing is a core problem in international development debates, whereby slum upgrading is viewed as a dominant policy to integrate formal and informal areas. Conceptually, challenges to socio-spatial integration are associated with unbalanced development processes of urban de- and re-densification beyond the housing level. However, a lack of empirical understanding of these processes limits the case for redistributive land use policies to complement slum upgrading. To address this gap, our study adopts an exploratory approach, applying GIS-based techniques to population census and open data on land use in São Paulo, Brazil, in order to analyze the distribution of population densities across residential built-up types in informal and informal areas, although there are constrains related to small-scale spatial data sources on urban density. This shows that informal settlements are indeed the densest residential built-up type in the city while revealing the underlying spatial inequality between informal settlements and low-rise, high-standard residential areas. We suggest that more emphasis be placed on the design and implementation of redistributive policies to avoid spatialized forms of inequality associated with uneven urban development. This will ensure the spatial and social integration of urban areas.