Over one billion people worldwide live in informal settlements. In Brazil, such settlements are known as favelas—complex territories shaped by steep topography, dense social networks, and rapid, informal construction. Rio de Janeiro’s favelas are home to more than 1.5 million people. Senseable City Rio, our collaboration with the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro, aims to develop technologies that help its residents better understand and shape their own territories, which is especially important when it comes to favelas.
Because of their complexity and rapid growth, traditional mapping methods struggle to capture the richness and nuance of favelas, so these communities remain largely invisible. Moreover, favelas often lack essential infrastructure and are disproportionately affected by environmental and public health risks tied to their built form.
In a new paper in npj Urban Sustainability, we introduce a different approach, revealing not just buildings and streets, but the morphology that underpins daily life in these communities. Using LiDAR scanning combined with semantic segmentation, we accurately map the intricate spatial structures, rapid transformations, and hidden layers of Rio’s favelas, empowering residents with new insights into their territories.
Data Clouds, first exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, captures Vidigal, one such favela, in a new light. Co-created with local residents, Sondoténica Engenharia, and Journey, it transforms high-resolution spatial data into a new way of seeing and discussing the future of these vital urban communities—as shown in this video prepared by Sondotécnica.
Sources:
- https://bit.ly/mitnewsletter
- https://senseable.mit.edu/data-clouds-global/
- https://senseable.mit.edu/papers/pdf/20251210_Liu-etal_UnveilingInternal_npjUrbanSustainability.pdf
