VIRTUAL London.

Abstract

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Informal settlements are present all around the world, especially in the Global South. Although presenting several urban problems, those settlements can also represent a solution for the lack of affordable housing in urban areas. Legalizing informal settlements is a step toward giving such places access to urban commodities and advocating urban inclusion by attributing identity and encouraging ownership. The goal of this paper is twofold, first to unravel how informal settlements are excluded from improvement opportunities by facing restrictive in-effect codes, and second to present a discussion of what would be an alternative solution to such codes. We use as a case study Santa Marta favela, a medium-sized informal settlement located on a hillside within a prime urban area in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The research presented is divided into four main steps: Bibliographic research on local building and planning codes that the case study is subjected to, including the selection of a validated assessment tool for housing; data collection on the case study with archival consulting and physical assessment to gather data on physical aspects of the case study; Assessment of the case study comparing the physical aspects of the case study with the local codes, as well as using the selected evaluation tool to assess those same physical characteristics; Conclusions. Results show how the application of current legislation leaves no margin for physical improvements in the case study and propose the use of alternative assessment tools to determine adequate physical improvements.