Rio Pre-World Cup Facelift
For Its Infamous Favelas
With an eye on the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, both to take place in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro plans to improve its image with an extreme makeover of its notorious hillside slums.
Already known as the Cidade Maravilhosa (Marvelous City,) Rio de Janeiro is getting ready to become more fabulous still. South America’s “sleeping giant,” Brazil has finally woken up and is quickly becoming an international power. And Rio, the country’s second largest city, is hoping to cut a profile worthy of that status by hiding its darkest sides: the favelas, its infamous hillside slums.
The housing department of the city has launched a program called Morar Carioca (Living Carioca Style) to reshape 215 of the city’s 600 favelas. In recent months, the police have struggled to pacify the slums. Now architecture will do its part to fix the many social issues that plague these troublesome areas, which together cover an area of about 12 million square meters. The Inter-American Development Bank has helped raise roughly 4 billion euros worth of funding for the project, and authorities have already selected 40 projects by some of Brazil’s best architecture firms to carry out the transformation.
The 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games have together played a large part in hastening the projects and spurring fundraising efforts. But more importantly, according to sociologists, the Brazilian society is finally feeling the need to address long lasting social injustices.
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