File:Favela da rocinha panorama, rio de janeiro, brazil 2006 (4538075878).jpg

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one more panorama from the archives: favela da rocinha, rio de janeiro, brazil 2006.

which cities represent 20th century urbanism best? the modernist planning of brasilia in the previous image, its rigidity and odd, empty poetry? the concrete sculptures and enormous distances of chandigarh? or is it simply endless suburbia, strangely related across the globe like some growth waiting to engulf us all?

I would nominate the favelas, slums and shanty towns of the world - the unplanned cities of all the people who do not fit official planning. homes of the homeless, the illegal, the unwanted, the unregistred, the refugees, the poor...they represent the untrammeled growth of our megacities, the issues our politicians refuse to face or can't handle. but they ought also represent to us human creativety and perseverance. the central street running, hairpin style, down through rocinha is a reused racetrack - see if you can come up with a better example of adaptive reuse on an urban scale.

but the rocinha favela is a spectacular example for its size alone. estimates say up to 150.000 people live there in a self-regulating, parallel society built inside rio de janeiro. the favelas of rio are exceptional for being very central, lodged between the well-off neighbourhoods their inhabitants helped build. copacabana and ipanema, both near rocinha, used the flat costal land for their speculative highrises while the migrant construction workers were left to fend for themselves on the surrounding mountainsides.

the problem they solved alone was that of social housing. the fundamental lesson that in complex societies, the market forces cannot provide decent homes for all, is at least as old as ship building industry in venice where the cost of living even in the middle ages was at odds with the need for cheap, reliable labour. social housing near the arsenale was a component in the city defenses. social housing, to my mind, remains a part of any city's defenses, yet societies, like individuals, forget...

in rio, the unplanned and unpoliced favelas came under the rule of drug lords and still are. there is a lesson here for anyone carrying romantic notions about anarchy: outside the rule of law lies the rule of the criminally insane, and there is no middle ground. the favelas are so closely connected with crime that the many people who live there for reasons of poverty have cover addresses with better-off friends or family simply to be able to find a job; the social stigma is massive but people work around it. when the local bus company refused to enter rocinha, the inhabitants set up their own bus route taking workers from the slums to the city.

today, the favalas command priceless views of rio and the atlantic, the land that was first deemed too expensive to develop is increasingly attractive, but the city is recognizing the importance of the favelas and its own dependence on the people who live there. the major slums are being added to official maps of the city, their streets named, and their status changed to that of neighbourhoods, hopefully drawing them out of political limbo and isolation.

the change is for a large part symbolic, criminals still being in charge, and the Brazilians we spoke to were sceptical. their disappointment over the years with the impotence and corruption of police and politicians dealing with the favelas is understandable: the power of the drug lords who control most of the slums is formidable and frankly unbelievable to a northerner. it could be argued that the municipality is acting in denial of reality, but by giving permanence to the temporary and rights to residents, they are also showing their faith in people who have long proven their exceptional resources under difficult conditions.