Coletivo Favela
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
By Alexa Jensen
land value, gentrification, government intervention programs, eviction, mega event, displacement
Coletivo Favela is a land rights tool that works to educate residents on existing urban policy and phenomena.
Current Brazilian urban policy has laid the groundwork for favela residents to begin to claim their right to the city; while many Brazilian municipalities have initiated an activation of federal urban policy by planning better cities both with and for their residents, the Rio de Janeiro municipality has instead averted and manipulated many of these policies in their preparation for past and upcoming mega events. The momentum of these global events have advanced the city into a state of exception that has served as a catalyst for an amalgamation of stakeholders and public-private partnerships to begin to privatize public resources in order to prime the city of Rio for the global stage. The operative framing of Rio as a global city has allowed pervasive narratives of “formality” versus “informality” to permeate and shape mega event planning practice and has thus sanctioned the evasion of federal urban policy by the Rio de Janeiro Municipality - where this evasion of urban policy within planning practice has effectively conceded to the displacement of over 77,000 residents between the years of 2009 and 2015.
Coletivo Favela is a land rights instrument is a tool which features three distinct components that combine to create a comprehensive body of knowledge and resources for favela residents: Education, Legalization, and Collectivization.
Coletivo Favela works to uncover the ways in which existing urban policy may be translated spatially and visually in order to empower favela residents to effectively critique the current conditions produced by a municipal-level liberalization of federal urban policy. Specifically, it works to expose the ways in which favela residents may be able to make more informed decisions about their land tenure, land rights, and claiming a right to the city both within and outside of states of exception.
You can visit Coletivo Favela Here: http://coletivofavela.github.io/Coletivo_Favela/index.html
The maps that I have created for the land rights tool are a map of Government Interventions for the Educational Portion of Coletivo Favela
…and a map of Land Value Variation from 2010 to Present as it corresponds to Olympic development to show residents to effects of gentrification in their communities