Rethinking Minha Casa,Minha Vida: The Resurgence of Public Space

Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life) is a federal programme started in 2009 that provides low-interest finance to construction companies in an attempt to plug the housing crisis and roll out millions of homes for low-income families across Brazil. Architect Nanda Eskes of Atelier 77 and photographer André Vieira look at the impact that this fast-track, hands-off approach has had on the overall quality of housing provision and the urban environment; they also highlight some innovative initiatives that have been conceived to ameliorate its impact.     

Failing the Informal City: How Rio de Janeiro's Mega Sporting Events Derailed the Legacy of Favela-Bairro

The eviction of thousands of inhabitants from informal settlements has been a regressive feature in the lead up to Rio 2016. Writer and curator Justin McGuirk describes why, on the eve of the Olympic Games, the government reverted to favela removals after the enlightened era of the Favela-Bairro in the 1990s, which saw informal communities upgraded and integrated into the formal city.     

Linking the Formal and Informal: Favela Urbanisation and Social Housing in São Paulo

São Paulo is Brazil's largest city with over 20 million inhabitants, 14 per cent of which live in informal settlements. Here author, critic and editor Fernando Serapião describes various housing initiatives led by Elisabete França during her two stints at the city's Secretaria de Habitação (SEHAB – Housing Secretariat), which employed design as a tool to upgrade and more fully integrate the city's favelas in the formal city.     

Landscaping Brazil: The Legacy of Roberto Burle Marx

The Modernist landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (1909–94) was a game changer, revolutionising the treatment of green space in Brazil. Here, architect Alexandre Hepner , co-founder of Estúdio ARKIZ, and Silvio Soares Macedo , a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, reflect on Burle Marx's enduring legacy.     

Salvador: The Struggle for Dialogue Within a Heritage City

Founded by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century as the colonial capital of Brazil, Salvador da Bahia on the northeast coast retains to this day a unique historical centre. Now a burgeoning metropolis, Salvador is also the country's third largest city with all the social, political and infrastructure problems and inequalities that accompany explosive urban growth. Sergio Ekerman , an architect and professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, describes how a lack of political will and consensus between private and public stakeholders is failing to produce the dialogue necessary for coherent urban development.     

Simultaneous Territories: Unveiling the Geographies of Latin American Cities

The harmonious, utopian image that housing in Latin America exuded across the world in the postwar years is very much at odds with the current view of the region, in which unbridled shantytowns dominate. Patricio del Real sets out to understand how such a rupture might have been possible: What was the process of exclusion at play in these Modernist projects? How does Modernism represent simultaneous territories in which emerging challenges to the social and political status quo were merely muffled by the architectural seduction of the 1950s?. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.