Precarious Settlements Research Articles

Fronteiras urbanas, mercados em disputa: jogos de poder na produção de espaços

Abstract In this article, we view the expansion fronts of urban borders as privileged spaces to understand practical agencies, the network of actors, and the power games involved in the production of urban land and housing markets in São Paulo. An unavoidable presence in those places today, the men of Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC – First Capital Command), in interaction with this intricate network of actors, act as operators of these markets and the internal management of popular territories. The fact is that the PCC's businesses expand as occupations and precarious settlements expand. In the ambivalent game of protection and extortion, between acceptance and coercion, they mobilize power resources in agreements, disputes, conflicts, and accommodations that constitute the production and management of informal land and housing markets.

Gramáticas do desenvolvimento. Da economia informal aos assentamentos informais

Abstract This article seeks to deepen the discussion of the term ‘informal’ and its history. Through a genealogy based on scientometric and documental analyses, we observed that it emerged in the field of economics in 1960 and was widely disseminated until the late 1990s, when it was re-signified as an urban typology associated with slums. The Habitat I, II, and III conferences revealed alignments and inflections between international agendas of diffuse rights and urbanization strategies for precarious settlements. We verified the moment when the term ‘informal settlement’ started to be used in Brazil, its generality, imprecision, and the disqualifying aspects that its use as an adjective enables. The final comments point to necessary revisions in public policies and academic research to obtain greater precision in concepts and reduce the stigmatization of territories.

Ejerciendo derechos desde abajo: Vivienda, género, migración y derecho a la ciudad desde Antofagasta, Chile

Elizabeth Andrade Huaringa is a woman, migrant, activist, and housing leader of the informal settlement of Los Arenales in Antofagasta, on the coastal edge of the Atacama Desert, Chile. In 2022, she was awarded the National Human Rights Award precisely because of her work on social rights, women’s rights, migrants’ rights, and above all, her work on the right to housing and to the city. In this Conversation with Camila and Ana, Eli reflects on her personal and collective history, on the construction of the right to housing and the city from precarious, popular or informal settlements, on the organisation of women in the context of crisis and violence, and on the progress and expansion of human rights from their everyday exercise.

Rheology of hail-debris flow and implications in flow mobility

During 29-31 January 2021 (austral summer), an extreme storm event triggered catastrophic debris flows in central Chile (33-36°S). At small and precarious rural settlements in the commune of Malloa in central Chile, debris flows where triggered by a hailstorm. Hail-debris flows, with hail volume concentration near 10%-20%, caused 200 injured individuals and 73 damaged houses. In this study, hail-debris flows where modelled using the FLO2D. software, calibrated against flow velocities and flooded areas obtained from audio-visual records taken by local inhabitants (using cell phones) and a high-accuracy post-event topography obtained with a drone. Results suggest that hail content significantly reduces flow resistance compared to typical debris flows, thus increasing flow velocity, and run out. On the other hand, damage to infrastructure was more related to the materiality of the houses (precarious settlements) than to debris flow severity.

Presence of Aedes aegypti, vector of dengue virus and its susceptibility to chemical control, in areas under influence of precarious human settlements in San Antonio municipality, Central- Paraguay

La OMS ha señalado que las enfermedades de transmisión vectorial-ETV, engloban más de 17% de las enfermedades infecciosas en todo el mundo, entre ellas el dengue. El presente estudio se encuentra abocado en el Plan de Acción sobre entomología y control de vectores 2018-2023 de la OMS y OPS, respecto a la presencia del Aedes aegypti vector del virus dengue-DEN y su susceptibilidad al control químico, en áreas bajo influencia de asentamientos humanos precarios en el municipio de San Antonio, Central-Paraguay, altamente urbanizado. Un muestreo de campo a través de ovitrampas generó datos de criaderos de Ae. aegypti en áreas bajo influencia de asentamientos humanos precarios con índices de infestación larvaria por Ae aegypti entre 8,6% y 9,5%, superando el valor tolerable < 1% estudiados entre 2018 y 2019. Mediante modelación por DIVAGIS, fueron determinadas las áreas de existencia de Ae aegypti en San Antonio y los distritos vecinos, en relación a las 19 variables bioclimáticas, siendo las variables de mayor influencia el intervalo de temperatura diurna promedio la isotermalidad, temperatura promedio del mes más frio y la precipitación del mes seco, que garantizan la presencia y desarrollo de este vector Aedes aegypti). Los Mapas generados fueron complementados con la presencia de asentamientos humanos e industrias como actividad antrópica insertadas en cuencas hidrográficas y vías fluviales importantes para la instalación del vector en domicilio y peri domicilio. La evaluación de la susceptibilidad/ resistencia de poblaciones silvestres de Ae. aegypti colectado en San Antonio, a larvicida Temefos, mediante bioensayos en condiciones controladas de laboratorio, reveló que las poblaciones circulantes del vector Aedes aegypti, son susceptibles RR<3 al larvicida utilizado por los programas de control vectorial del Ministerio de Salud Pública y Bienestar Social. Todo lo anteriormente expuesto, se encuentra enmarcado en el desarrollo de las metas de los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible, los cuales estipulan que, para el 2030, se debe poner fin a las enfermedades tropicales desatendidas y otras transmisibles por vectores, más específicamente en ODS 3 Salud y Bienestar. Igualmente se circunscribe con el ODS 11, el cual versa sobre ciudades y comunidades sostenibles, debido a que indaga aspectos relativos a la creciente urbanización en la zona de estudio, con varios desafíos, como la expansión urbana no planificada, sin servicios lo que hace que las ciudades sean más vulnerables a las enfermedades. El trabajo desarrollado sienta bases para futuros estudios de empoderamiento ciudadano y desarrollo de una adecuada gobernanza, frente al problema de salud urbana que constituye el DEN.

Using statistical modelling to identify precarious urban Settlements and their access to Water and Sanitation services in Brazil

ABSTRACT SDG 6 aims universal coverage of Water and Sanitation services for all, under the principle of leaving no one behind. Thus, measuring progress on service levels cannot be based on averages, at the risk of not capturing the real situation in vulnerable areas such as Urban Precarious Settlements (UPS), to which the lack of appropriate indicators and representative data hinder access to the services. This paper aims to use statistical modelling to propose a new procedure to identify UPS in Brazil, to then measure their access to WS services and compare with general figures. The method was applied to the Federal District of Brazil, testing three statistical techniques: Linear Discriminant Analysis, Quadratic Discriminant Analysis and Logistic Regression. The latter presented the best predictive performance resulting in a sensitivity of 88,5% and an Area Under the Curve of 0,96. Overall results demonstrated inequalities of access among the poorest, particularly to sanitation.

Illegal Housing in Medellín: Autoconstruction and the Materiality of Hope

ABSTRACTDrawing on ethnographic research in El Oasis, a highly precarious self-built settlement in Medellín, Colombia, this article examines the illegal practice of autoconstruction as a material expression of hope. It focuses on the multilayered, symbolic meaning of self-built housing, as it represents the pursuit of dignity, permanence, and agency—as opposed to poverty, uncertainty, and lack of agency—and an active and material form of hoping for a better future in the city. The state plays an ambiguous role in residents’ perspectives, who conceive of it, simultaneously, as a threat to and a guarantor of their future in the city. This ambiguity becomes materialized in the physical form of residents’ self-built housing, as residents either embrace or refrain from making improvements to their houses in response to shifting perceptions about the state’s intentions regarding the future of the settlement.

Contrasts of urban development in Bauru city (SP): slum and fortified enclaves in Jardim Nicéia

The urban development of medium-sized cities in the interior of São Paulo state reproduced, to a large extent, the segregating logic of the Brazilian urbanization of large urban centers throughout the XX century. This paper analyzes the remarkable characteristics of the recent urbanization process in the city of Bauru (SP), relating them to the rise of precarious settlements in the form of the favela and the phenomenon of contemporary segregation in fortified enclaves. The object of analysis is the Jardim Nicéia slum, located between gated condominiums in the southern part of the city. The methodology used included a bibliographic review of theoretical and analytical references, research on demographic and socioeconomic data sources (IBGE, City Hall and municipal public agencies) and socio-spatial analysis of the area, in order to interpret how segregation is reproduced in this specific territorial area.

Spatial analysis of Zika virus microcephaly cases in a Brazilian municipality

Objective: to analyze the spatial distribution of microcephaly cases by Zika virus in a Brazilian municipality. Methods: ecological study that analyzed 53 confirmed cases of microcephaly by Zika virus, reported between 2015 and 2016, extracted from the Registry of Public Health Events - Microcephaly. Incidence rates of the disease in neighborhoods of the municipality, Global and Local Moran Index and Kernel dispersion method were calculated. Results: common areas with high Zika microcephaly incidence rates were identified. The value of Moran’s I demonstrated the presence of clusters, with p=0.001, I=0.3159 in 2015 and I=0.2158 in 2016. According to the Kernel map, there was concentration of cases in Regional Executive Secretariats IV and VI. Most of the cases are within or near precarious settlements. Conclusion: the cases did not occur randomly and reinforce their relationship with the living conditions of the population. Contributions to practice: it is expected that this study can contribute to reflect on public policies and surveillance actions to reduce Zika transmission, recognizing the territories of higher risk for the disease. In addition, to expand discussions between managers and health professionals to qualify notification, care, and monitoring of children with microcephaly by Zika.

Shakespeare's wavering geography: Religious topographia in Cymbeline

As forms of vivid description, or enargia, the figures of topographia, topothesia, and chorographia feature prominently in Elizabethan rhetoric manuals. This article considers Cymbeline's wavering geography as a confluence of these tropes. It reads the multiple rhetorical constructs of Shakespearean topographia in Cymbeline as instances of dislocation between the strictures imposed by a national identity project and the ever-present longing for a traditional religious past. In this respect, Cymbeline, whose Christian intimations are still the subject of contention, may also be said to dramatise and interrogate the precarious settlements (cultural, religious, and geographical) brought about by the Henrician reformation.

Modelling and assessment of sustainable urban drainage systems in dense precarious settlements subject to flash floods

In developing countries, dense, precarious and informal settlements are common. In the tropics, the occurrence of intense rainfall and the increased impervious surfaces have led to disastrous flash floods. Sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) are an alternative to enhance stormwater management and runoff control, providing benefits related to social and environmental domains. This study aims to ground the development of procedures for SUDS implementation to mitigate flooding, and to maximize urban benefits. We present a modelling framework of SUDS implementation, using the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) to simulate various SUDS scenarios. An application to a small catchment in Brazil considered permeable pavements, bioretention systems, infiltration trenches and rainwater harvesting systems, introduced in both public and private areas. The results demonstrate that SUDS implemented in public spaces, although they may increase access to public facilities, do not completely avoid flooding in the denser parts of the catchment. In such cases, measures must be implemented in private lots due to the reduced amount of available public spaces. Such evidence shows that one of the key elements for flash flood management in consolidated dense and precarious urban settlements is the integration of SUDS measures with the engagement of local inhabitants in decision-making.

Identifying Precarious Settlements and Urban Fabric Typologies Based on GEOBIA and Data Mining in Brazilian Amazon Cities

Although 70% of the Amazon population lives in urban areas, studies on the urban Amazon are scarce. Much of the urban Amazon population lives in precarious settlements. The distinctiveness and diversity of Amazonian precarious settlements are vast and must be identified to be considered in the development of appropriate public policies. Aiming at investigating precarious settlements in Amazon, this study is guided by the following questions: For the Brazilian Amazon region, is it possible to identify areas of precarious settlements by combining geoprocessing and remote sensing techniques? Are there different typologies of precarious settlements distinguishable by their spatial arrangements? Thus, we developed a methodology for identifying precarious settlements and subsequently classifying them into urban fabric typologies (UFT), choosing the cities of Altamira, Cametá, and Marabá as study sites. Our classification model utilized geographic objects-based image analysis (GEOBIA) and data mining of spectral data from WPM sensor images from the CBERS-4A satellite, jointly with texture metrics, context metrics, biophysical index, voluntary geographical information, and neighborhood relationships. With the C5.0 decision tree algorithm we carried out variable selection and classification of these geographic objects. Our estimated models show accuracy above 90% when applied to the study sites. Additionally, we described Amazonian UFT in six types to be identified. We concluded that Amazonian precarious settlements are morphologically diverse, with an urban fabric different from those commonly found in Brazilian metropolitan areas. Identifying and characterizing distinct precarious areas is vital for the planning and development of sustainable and effective public policies for the urban Amazon.

Urban River Interventions in São Paulo Municipality (Brazil): The Challenge of Ensuring Justice in Sociotechnical Transitions

The paper aims to discuss the sociotechnical transitions regarding urban rivers policy in São Paulo Municipality by focusing on programs and projects conducted since 2000. Accordingly, we use a theoretical reflection on sociotechnical transitions and just transitions in interventions related to water and cities. Our work is based on a documental analysis of programs and projects for urban rivers in the municipality conducted via theoretical discussion. The primary focus is on the current sociotechnical regime, the channeling of streams and construction of road systems on its banks, and disputes and pressures brought by the technological landscape and niches, which lead to the construction of linear parks and leisure areas along with the bodies of water. It also shows how the issue of justice has been losing ground in this transition, which although is “in the making,” already presents many factors of injustice. This is due to the low presence of the theme of precarious settlements, in innovative speeches and practices, and the different treatment given by the programs and projects for rivers in the consolidated middle- and upper-class regions and for those located on the peripheries.

Understanding urban poverty in Brazil through the people and their life storiesEntendendo a pobreza urbana no Brasil através das pessoas e suas histórias de vida

Since the 1990s, our view of urban poverty has broadened to include concepts such as exclusion, vulnerability, and violence, rather than being confined to economic factors. This article seeks to demonstrate the value of surveying the everyday life of precarious settlements so that an understanding can be obtained of the dynamics of the spatial and social integration of the urban poor. A qualitative approach has been adopted that links poverty, mobility, social networks and State action and it is argued that informal settlements are spatial traps since an individual perspective and exploitative relationships are superseding collective action. The use of the life stories of the residents of precarious settlements serves as a means of overcoming prejudices and show how the struggle for a place in the city takes place. They have emerged as a powerful instrument for understanding urban poverty and helping define public policies and thus combat the problem of continuous mobility and spatial segregation, vulnerability and exclusion. Moreover, they reveal that, although expressing their right to the city, the struggle for a place in the city is not over.

The effects of COVID-19 on vulnerable groups: A reflection on South African informal urban settlements

Background: The economically vulnerable population, mostly black, especially those who are residing in precarious informal settlements are most susceptible to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.Aim: To determine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the socio-economic condition of the vulnerable groups in South Africa. It also attempts to reflect the government’s response strategies to provide help and services for the vulnerable communities who are considered to be most susceptible to the existing pandemic. Lastly, the response strategies of civil society groups and the challenges they are encountering in providing humanitarian assistance to indigent communities are explored.Setting: This is a reflective study where secondary data has been analysed and intertwined with the researchers’ experiences and insights of the South African informal settlements’ welfare.Methods: This article followed a reflective approach where the experiences of the vulnerable communities are strategically reflected upon.Results: This fascinating study unearthed the effects of the coronavirus disease on the socio-economic conditions of vulnerable communities, the economy of the informal sector, the brutal enforcement agencies during the lockdown period, criminality, the fragmented government response and the marginalisation and frustration of civil society groups in providing humanitarian assistance to those in need.Conclusion: The South African government’s fragmentations, bureaucratic, maladministration and corruption in public departments have adversely impacted the welfare of the vulnerable groups who are living in the informal settlements. The human rights violations by the security agencies which are directed to the indigent people, and the centralisation of the humanitarian efforts by government had a negative effect on their wellbeing.

Invisible informality and the contribution of information modeling to data-based urban regulation

Recent studies have established the role of urban planning policies in feeding the growth of informal settlements in Brazilian cities, through the socio-spatial exclusion of low-income residents. The difficulties of reversing this exclusionary logic are due to several complex factors. A factor less discussed in Brazilian literature, which has began to draw the attention of scholars, is the invisibility of the informal city. This research assumes that it is necessary to regulate the urban form of precarious informal settlements, in order to prevent the deterioration of urban environmental quality. We highlight the importance of compiling data about their urban form and their built environment, in order to contribute to a reality-based regulatory policy for these settlements. After discussing the phenomenon of urban informality in Fortaleza, we applied a methodology that combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and City Information Modeling (CIM), to support the redefinition of urban rules for precarious settlements of informal origin. This procedure will reveal not only the extent of the inadequacies of the (past and current) land use and occupation codes, but will also present some potentialities of GIS and CIM to inform its redefinition.

Grassroots mobilization in Brazil’s urban Amazon: Global investments, persistent floods, and local resistance across political and legal arenas

• We analyze how the urban poor mobilize against floods in the context of a major urban development project in Latin America. • We find a mix of optimism and skepticism regarding the potential changes brought by political and legal mobilization. • The judicialization of flood-related claims in the legal arena coexists with social mobilization in the political arena. • For grassroots movements, litigating against social-ecological injustices is a means to foster better urban governance. By the 1980s, the Brazilian Amazon was already an urbanized forest. A large portion of its population was living in non-rural areas attracted by better service provisioning and economic opportunities in fast-developing urban centers. Located at the Amazon Estuary-Delta, Belém is the Amazon’s largest metropolitan area, marked by informal urban expansion, and serving as an illustrative case of the opportunities and challenges with which urban populations deal in the region. Faced with significant pressures of absent infrastructure, high rates of poverty, precarious settlements, and ever more frequent flood events, already in the 1980s, Belém was home to the biggest urban reform project of its time in Latin America: The Macro-Drainage Project of the Una River Watershed. Costing over 300 million USD, the project was intended to have a multilevel governance system through which the Inter-American Development Bank and local government could coordinate project activities. Yet, due to the combination of poor infrastructure and changing rainfall patterns, about half a million people currently remain vulnerable to flood hazards and property damages. Our analysis uses a socio-legal approach to studying grassroots mobilization against the violation of social and environmental rights aggravated by floods. We also draw on Ostrom’s concepts of action arena and action situation to examine collective action across political and legal arenas within which individuals, grassroots organizations, and the state negotiate/contest flood-related issues. Conducting archival and ethnographic research, we find a story of conflict and cooperation between the civil society and political and legal actors, which accounts for a mix of optimism and skepticism regarding the improvement in the livelihood of the urban poor affected by this developmental program. This interdisciplinary lens contributes to understanding the limits and potentials of collective action to address, whether through political and/or legal mobilization, urban inequalities and social vulnerability to environmental and climate change.

Big data for big issues: Revealing travel patterns of low-income population based on smart card data mining in a global south unequal city

Smart card data (SCD) allow analyzing mobility at a fine level of detail, despite the remaining challenges such as identifying trip purpose. The use of the SCD may improve the understanding of transit users' travel patterns from precarious settlements areas, where the residents have historically limited access to opportunities and are usually underrepresented in surveys. In this paper, we explore smart card data mining to analyze the temporal and spatial patterns of the urban transit movements from residents of precarious settlements areas in São Paulo, Brazil, and compare the similarities and differences in travel behavior with middle/high-income-class residents. One of our concerns is to identify low-paid employment travel patterns from the low-income-class residents, that are also underrepresented in transportation planning modeling due to the lack of data. We employ the k-means clustering algorithm for the analysis, and the DBSCAN algorithm is used to infer passengers' residence locations. The results reveal that most of the low-income residents of precarious settlements begin their first trip before, between 5 and 7 AM, while the better-off group begins from 7 to 9 AM. At least two clusters formed by commuters from precarious settlement areas suggest an association of these residents with low-paid employment, with their activities placed in medium / high-income residential areas. So, the empirical evidence revealed in this paper highlights smart card data potential to unfold low-paid employment spatial and temporal patterns.

IMMerSe: An integrated methodology for mapping and classifying precarious settlements

The widespread presence of precarious settlements in developing countries remains a persistent and relevant issue to be addressed. Developing well-informed strategies to tackle it demands up-to-date and reliable information on these settlements, which are usually unavailable. This paper proposes a methodology for mapping and classifying precarious settlements into different typologies. The methodology, named IMMerSe (Integrated Methodology for Mapping and Classifying Precarious Settlements), integrates methods, spatial data and knowledge from different sources and nature. It consists in a flexible and easy-to-follow classification framework that involves: (a) integration of a wide range of physical, environmental, morphological, and census-derived variables; (b) estimation of logistic regression models to generate surfaces of probability for different typologies of precarious settlements; and (c) identification and classification of precarious settlements through classification trees. All stages rely on the collaboration between researchers and policymakers, in a process of co-production of knowledge including conceptual development, understanding local contexts, model building, validation of results, and improvement of applied tools for housing policies. The methodology was applied to the Metropolitan Region of Baixada Santista, Brazil. In order to evaluate the replication potential of this methodology, the models that were built based on data from Baixada Santista, were then applied to another Brazilian area, the ABC Region. The results describe the distinctive features of each settlement typology, help to identify previously unknown precarious settlements in the studied regions, and contribute to produce knowledge for policy purposes.

Climate change vulnerability assessment of urban informal settlers in Nepal, a least developed country

Urban poor with limited resources and residing in precarious informal settlements are often one of the most vulnerable populations to climate variability and change. The present study seeks to assess the vulnerability of informal settlers to climate variability and change. Drawing from natural hazards, politico-economic, and ecological resilience strands of vulnerability literature we developed an integrated set of indicators for vulnerability assessment. The vulnerability of informal settlement dwellers was assessed in the hilly district of Kathmandu and the plain regions of the Nawalpur district of Nepal by collecting primary data from 300 randomly selected households, 150 from each district. Communities living in informal settlements experienced higher exposure to climate risk with lower adaptive capacity. Informal settlements with scarce resources, depilated infrastructure, fewer livelihood opportunities and knowledge gaps pose considerable vulnerability to climate variability and change. Our findings reveal that the inhabitants of informal settlements in the plain region are more vulnerable than that of the informal settlements of the hilly region due to higher exposure and sensitivity and lower adaptive capacities of the informal settlers of the plains. Enabling factors such as livelihood diversification, improved infrastructure, health facilities, social capitals, and support from local government with contextual policies and interventions, can facilitate better adaptation among the informal settlers and make them resilient to climate variability and change.