The Favela-Bairro program: more of the same? Which are the possibilities for the overcoming of the existing “problems” in Rio de Janeiro city?

Abstract

From two case studies of the Favela-Bairro program, the main policy intervention in the slums of Rio, in the last years of the last century and the first of the current, we seek to understand the extent to which the program really differ from previous policy and the possibilities to overcome the problems existing in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In general, the actions of government in the Favela-Bairro repeat the mistakes of most of the programs adopted in order to solve the occupation and informal construction by the popular classes, which since the 1940s, to focus its actions on mitigation measures involving the consequences of the process of slum formation, "forget" the causes that produce this process, not possible "solutions" to many practical problems in the city of Rio de Janeiro and even aggravating them