International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development

Favelas and the Making of Contemporary Brazilian Cities

Brazil has moved beyond the pilot stages of favela and informal-settlement upgrading. Yet the country's experience of favela upgrading has challenged earlier international optimism about the prospects of effectively integrating informal settlements into the broader urban fabric and achieving “cities without slums.” Favela upgrading has proved considerably more complex than initially anticipated.

Limited state capacity, institutional discontinuities, and interruptions to upgrading programmes have resulted in incomplete layers of intervention. Contemporary favelas also differ significantly from the settlements that emerged in the mid-twentieth century. Dynamic real-estate markets have generated increasing building densities and intensified exposure to urban heat, flooding, inadequate sanitation, environmental hazards, and climate-related risks, with implications for public health. The dissemination of territories under armed control has further weakened the state’s fragile monopoly over the legitimate use of force and the regulation of land use.

This Article Collection on Brazilian informal settlements contributes to the dialogue between empirical research, critical urban theory, quantitative and spatial analysis, and the practice of urban upgrading through three complementary lenses. First, favela analytics and modelling, focused on measuring, mapping, and projecting the multiple dimensions and dynamics of these territories. Second, the socio-economic, technological and environmental dynamics of favelas, grounded in critical urban studies and attentive to the processes that shape their transformation over time. Third, statecraft for favela upgrading, aimed at examining the limitations and potential of specific urban policies and interventions.

Brazil is at the forefront of progressive approaches to informal-settlement upgrading in the Global Urban South. Since the pioneering interventions of local governments, the country has undergone a steep learning process, involving an unprecedented expansion in the scale of interventions, the mobilization of substantial financial resources, and the engagement of state and non-state actors in experimenting with new forms of co-producing the right to the city. Yet significant challenges persist, and the growing complexity and diversity of favelas reveal their inextricable entanglement with broader processes of urban transformation. Brazil’s trajectory in governing, upgrading, and transforming favelas thus offers a distinctive lens through which to interrogate both the limits and the possibilities of contemporary urban planning. As such, the Brazilian experience holds relevance well beyond its national context and speaks directly to wider debates on urban development across the Global Urban South and beyond.

Subtopics include, but are not limited to:

• Favela analytics: innovations for understanding the multiple dimensions, spatial patterns, and dynamic evolution of favelas in Brazil
• Favelas and health: towards integrated analytical and policy frameworks
• Land, housing, and real estate markets in contemporary metropolitan favelas
• Technical networks and territorial digitalization in favelas
• Intra-dwelling housing precarity and the limits of conventional housing policy in favelas
• Climate change, environmental risk, and favelas
• Infrastructure dilemmas in the planning, financing, and implementation of favela upgrading
• The limits and potentials of participatory neighbourhood planning for risk reduction and climate adaptation in favelas
• Urban rights, institutional reform, and the limits and potentials of favela upgrading in Brazilian cities

Keywords: 

1. Favelas and informal settlements
2. Upgrading
3. Global Urban South
4. Critical urban studies
5. City analytics and modelling

­­All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript. International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development accepts the following types of article: Research Article.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is July 30, 2027.

Please contact Kara Roberts at kara.roberts@taylorandfrancis.com with any queries on discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Please be sure to select the appropriate Article Collection from the drop-down menu in the submission system.

Guest Advisors declares no potential conflicts of interests in line with our Editorial Policies.

Jeroen Johannes Klink is a professor of urban planning and economics at the Federal University of the ABC region (UFABC), which has been created in 2005 by the Brazilian government. He sits on the Board of Trustees of the Urban Studies Foundation (Glasgow/Scotland). He is also Director of the Center for Favela Studies (CEFAVELA).