Self-construction Territories: favela, informal housing and rights
Self-construction is the predominant form of space production in Latin American cities, through which not only housing is built, but entire human settlements. The Favelas are significant in terms of their own dynamics; every favela is self-built by urban poor citizens who seek social rights and fundamental guarantees, overlapped by layers of urbanization resulting from state interventions that do not always promote adequate spatial quality. Therefore, this research project asks: what type of housing and territory result from the processes of self-construction in favelas upgraded and, to what extent, does such production effectively contribute to the right to housing and to the city? To face the challenge of this issue, the city of Diadema was chosen as a research territory, because of its recognition and representativeness in terms of self-construction and urbanization of favelas. There, three favelas exemplify the territories produced by “spontaneous” self-construction processes, supported by municipal administration and technical assistance. Thus, throughout bibliographic, documentary and empirical research methods, it is intended to provide a critical approach regarding the contradictions and convergences around the research topics and to characterize its object by quantitative and qualitative descriptors.