Affordable housing is one of the most pressing challenges in cities worldwide, and Brazil is no exception. In our paper, we explore how planning and building codes impact the improvement of informal housing settlements, focusing on a Brazilian example, the Santa Marta favela in Rio de Janeiro. Favelas are self-constructed neighbourhoods that developed in response to Brazil’s housing shortage. While past governments have historically tried to eliminate these communities, many have persisted for decades, showing resilience and a surprising degree of urban integration. Our research asked: what happens when we assess these spaces not only through legal codes (which they often do not comply with) but also through alternative quality metrics? Using a housing quality evaluation method, we looked at aspects like articulation, personalization, pleasantness, safety, and spatial adequacy, revealing a holistic assessment of both the strengths and challenges of Santa Marta’s urban conditions.

What stood out was how restrictive planning codes are, often forbidding any new construction in areas like Santa Marta unless initiated by the government, without offering solutions or support for improvement. These codes treat informal settlements as problems to be erased, rather than as communities with real housing potential. We understand that those codes are important to ensure minimum requirements of quality, but we raise the discussion of what qualities those codes should look for regarding housing. The housing quality evaluation, on the other hand, allowed us to understand the lived reality of residents and identify actionable improvements in areas like circulation, safety, and open space quality. With this study, we wanted to show that although Santa Marta doesn’t “comply” with the law, it still functions as a neighborhood and meets many basic urban living needs.

This paper adds to the growing discourse calling for more flexible, context-sensitive planning tools that embrace informality as a starting point for sustainable development. We chose to publish with AMPS because of its commitment to interdisciplinary, real-world research that bridges policy, design, and lived experience. We hope our work encourages planners and policymakers to move beyond rigid codes and adopt more holistic tools that recognize the complexity—and potential—of informal housing.

Informal housing settlements and code compliance: the case of Santa Marta favela by Debora Verniz (University of Missouri, USA), José P. Duarte (The Pennsylvania State University, USA) and Mário Márcio Queiroz (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) is published in Architecture_MPS, volume 31.

housing quality evaluation code compliance affordable settlements informal settlements