Segregation within segregation: Informal settlements beyond socially homogenous areas

Abstract

More than one billion people live in slums and informal settlements worldwide. This urban condition poses an urgent need to look more closely into the spatial complexities of these areas. Informal settlements are still commonly seen as segregated places of poverty. Due to the usual scales of analyses, the social and spatial complexity of informal settlements may be easily overlooked. Although previous qualitative studies have suggested that poor areas are internally differentiated, there is little systematic study to date identifying patterns of segregation within poor areas through rigorous analysis. This paper explores a spatial statistical method to challenge the common-sense notion of informal settlements as socially homogeneous places. We do so by analysing segregation within areas that are themselves already segregated — a multiscalar property that may pervade smaller, seemingly homogeneous areas. We apply Moran's index to analyse residential segregation based on income within 42 largest informal settlements and nine Brazilian cities. Our results show that 37 % of the informal settlements analysed are composed of a complex residential mix featuring internal inequality patterns akin to those found in cities. Our approach also identifies racial inequalities and uneven access to urban infrastructures within favelas.