Environmental Performance and Social Inclusion: a Project for the Rocinha Favela in Rio de Janeiro

Rocinha, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, is one the largest favela of Latin-America. Founded in the early 1930’s it is now home of more than 160000 inhabitants, and it is characterized by low water quality, poor housing, lack of drainage and sanitation systems, and of green and public spaces. This paper presents the preliminary results of a joint research project between the Politecnico di Milano and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) for the improvement of the urban quality, health, livability and inclusiveness of Rocinha, that moves from an upgrading process of the environmental performance of the existing built environment. The project, in the frame the social responsibility program of Politecnico di Milano (Polisocial), is based on a multidisciplinary and integrated design methodology named IMM (Integrated Modification Methodology). The research aims to demonstrate that in a planet where the informal settlements are exponentially growing, strategies to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants are possible, and preliminary results, mostly achieved in the diagnostic phase of the process, are presented. Rocinha is seen as a complex system that has been investigated in its own morphological structure and the related environmental performance, focusing on: climate and energy, ecosystem services, waste management and their relation with urban morphology. This phase opens up to the next phases, specifically the intervention and retrofitting, that intend to select intervention areas and priorities and then to objectively size the implementation in Rocinha.