Letter from Rio.

Rio's reputation as a city of extremes is well deserved, but within this teeming tropical metropolis inventive and pragmatic solutions are gradually being developed to address the needs of the huge dispossessed populace and bring a measure of much-needed social and civic equilibrium to the urban realm.

No wonder Rio de Janeiro is called the 'Wonderful City'; the geography is gorgeous, the sun shines all year round and it is a blessing to stroll along its beaches, from Leblon to Copacabana. Sooner or later, however, you come to realize it is also a place of extreme contrasts. Rio is the second largest city of Brazil, with a population of around 5.5 million. Besides its national importance in the development of tertiary activities and tourism, the city has also become a focus of attention for those seeking solutions to difficult social and urban problems. Today, close to a fifth of its population lives in slums, the so-called favelas, illegal and uncharted low-income areas which, along with irregular land developments, are responsible for a third of all housing in Rio.

A combination of factors, such as Brazil's postwar economic transformation, the impact of industrialization and uncontrolled migration, has led to Rio's chaotic expansion. Between 1920 and 1940, the city's population doubled. From north to south, in central and peripheral areas, favelas sprang up everywhere. The census of 1940 revealed that approximately 140 000 people lived in 105 favelas, enduring unspeakable overcrowding and hygiene. By the early '80s, the first official survey in Rio revealed some shameful statistics: out of a total of 364 favelas, 69 per cent had no light, 94 per cent no water and 99 per cent no sewage system.

Almost two decades later, it is still hard to quantify such settlements, as the city's topography accentuates their heterogeneous character and formal diversity. However, after a century in which official attitudes have ranged from negligence to the violent removal of illegal settlements during the darkest years of dictatorship during the '60s and '70s, there has been a significant and welcome shift of attitude from elimination to urbanization.

Since 1993, the notion of integration has become the guiding principle of the city's municipal housing authorities. The issue is now considered a political priority and it is assumed that these dense spontaneous slum settlements are no longer temporary, but permanent. Moreover, it is understood that the favelas represent a solution, however partial or low quality, to a problem which has so far proved incapable of being solved by more conventional institutional means.

Signs of such a significant shift in attitude and policy are borne out by a series of recent programmes implemented by the Housing Secretariat headed by architect Sergio Magalhes. One of the most interesting initiatives is the so-called Favela-Bairro ('Slum-Neighbourhood') programme, which began at the start of 1994 to assist medium-size favelas, i.e. those consisting of between 500 and 2500 dwellings. The main challenge is to transform these areas into low-income neighbourhoods.

Following approval of the US$300 million project by the Bank for Inter-American Development, basic infrastructure works are being carried out in around 60 of Rio's slums, to allow implementation and maintenance of services such as water supply, sewage, pluvial water drainage, lighting, garbage collection, paving etc.

Access is improved and streets are linked to the city network. Leisure and social facilities such as community centres, sports fields and public gardens are integrated as much as possible in order to support community demands. Dwellings on unsuitable sites or in areas required for general development are removed and inhabitants rehoused in new residential buildings. Finally, streets are named, and houses and buildings are numbered.

The favelas are converted into 'Areas of Special Social Interest', a new form of urban zoning introduced by the City Master Plan in 1992, which guarantees and safeguards land ownership. New planning policies also impose restrictions and limitations to help regulate and improve spaces previously condemned as locations for drug dealing.

It is, of course, too early to make a full critical evaluation of this unique operation, but it certainly marks a turning point for architects in the city. Rooted as it is in the French tradition, the once influential Brazilian architecture has at last found a distinct means of expression and this has to be regarded as a worthwhile contribution to contemporary culture. Among the interventions carried out by interdisciplinary teams, involving several local architectural offices, those undertaken by Jorge Mario J Jauregui are currently in line for the Mies vander Rohe Foundation Prize for Latin-American Architecture. Jauregui's work was also honoured at the Architecture Biennial in Sao Paulo last year.

Unpretentious as they may be, the current regeneration programmes must be seen as a first effective step in breaking down urban and symbolic borders between the legal and the illegal city. They also form part of a wider urban strategy, closing a century in which Rio has been the focus of radical interventions and general plans, from the major surgery inspired by Haussmann to the proposals of Alfred Agache, Le Corbusier and Doxiadis, all of whom attempted to bring European Modernism to the urban core of the tropics.

It is true that the Old Continent remains as a model, yet today its rules are assumed to be more methodological than stylistic. Following the example of Barcelona, greater emphasis is now given to public spaces. The vision of the city as the sum of its neighbourhoods (basic criteria in the reconstruction of the Catalan capital), has given rise to a controversial urban renewal programme called 'Rio-Cidade'. Implemented in two phases (beginning with a public competition held in 1995), the programme seeks to 'reassert the crucial significance of streets for a well-balanced social life in the city, to invigorate the identity of each neighbourhood, to enhance their self-esteem and the roots of local communities'.

The first responses to these priorities were a sort of 'design fever' -- suddenly Rio was awash with fancy benches, street signs, sidewalks, obelisks (!) and bus stops, most so useless and uncomfortable that they cry out for replacement. Nonetheless, the programme has succeeded in bringing pedestrians hack to the streets, as well as restoring a lost sense of citizenship to the city's inhabitants.

Meanwhile, there are a whole set of separate interventions not subject to architectural competitions, which mayor may not be realized. The renovation of the city centre waterfront is being undertaken by Oriol Bohigas and Nuno Portas (officially invited as consultants) and Sergio Bernardes was asked to transform the crumbling shell of the pavilion he originally designed in the late '50s into a modern arena. And after the successful Museum of Contemporary Arts, just across the bay in Niteroi (AR April 1999), Oscar Niemeyer was finally invited to design a large convention centre for the amazing neighbourhood of Barra da Tijuca -- a local, but much worse, version of a NorthAmerican edge-city. All these plans and proposals suggest that Rio may be in for an encouraging new millennium.

Ana Luiza Nobre is an architectural historian and critic in Rio de Janeiro.

1. Textbook Rio-sun, sea and sand on the wealthy coast of Ipanema-Leblon, overlooked by the hillside favela of Vidigal, on the far left.

2. Watertower by architects Fabrica in a Favela-Bairro, or 'Slum-Neighbourhood'.

3. Jorge Mario Jauregui's vividly coloured daycare centre built in the heart of the Fuba-Campinho favela.

4. Oscar Nien,eyers Museum of Contemporary Art in Niteroi overlooking Guanabara Bay. Niemeyer is currently designing a convention centre for the Barra da Tijuca that will hopefully act as a spur to further development.

5. Public lighting by Pedro Paulino Cuimarages in the suburb of Penha. Part of an urban renewal programme Implemented by the Urban Development Secretariat, Barcelonais the model.