Although architects and planners have addressed informal settlements, or favelas, for over sixty years, it is only recently that there has been a shift in the paradigm. Following a long history of tabula rasa, public housing, self-help, and sites-and-services schemes, current approaches to the favela have evolved into strategies characterized as urban acupuncture, aiming to minimize displacement and improve the conditions in the area by focusing on the aspects most absent in the settlement: infrastructure, public space, and public equipment. We are now witnessing spectacular libraries in depressed neighborhoods, gondola systems in marginalized areas, and museums in informal settlements. It seems as though we have returned to the notion slums of hope, no longer vilifying informal settlements, but viewing them as integral in the development of the city......

Originally published in Monu#12 & Mammoth

For the #12 issue, MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) called for entries which "explore how people in the real estates business perceive and conceive cities".

Mammoth's contribution to the issue, "The Shelter Category", suggests that the primary function of the home in America is, ironically, not shelter but wealth creation, and use the Home and Garden Television Network as a vehicle to investigate and critique this culture of 'equity urbanism'.