This project examine the changing pattern of spatial inequality in urban Brazil, drawing on data from the national censuses conducted in 2000 and 2010. The favelas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are Brazil’s best known urban phenomenon, but they have not been fully studied with quantitative spatial data. The collaborators on this project have made many contributions to this area of research. Eduardo Marques is the author of numerous studies of spatial differentiation and social change in São Paulo, including his 2016 book, São Paulo in the Twenty-First Century Spaces, Heterogeneities, Inequalities. Edmond Preteceille and Adalberto Cardoso have maintained a long-term collaboration that focuses on Rio de Janeiro, showing that the main centrally located favelas are actually somewhat mixed in their class composition, with slow but progressive improvements over time in provision of public infrastructure (such as sewers), routinization of the informal housing market and construction of higher quality housing, and better access to health services. In their view, true urban slums are more likely to be found in the periphery. Our collaborative project also intends to shed light on other kinds of neighborhoods and their evolution, including the high-end and middle-class neighborhoods that are growing in both cities.
Here we share data resources that we have developed to examine these urban phenomena: