The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has made a $2.3 million contribution to a project team lead by the University of British Columbia and Brazil’s Ministry of Cities to reduce extreme poverty and improve conditions in informal urban settlements (Favelas) on the peripheries of Brazil’s metropolitan areas.
"Millions of people in Brazil’s major metropolitan areas suffer from inadequate housing, access to clean water, and sewage infrastructure,” says Peter Boothroyd, Project Director and professor in UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning. “They also have to contend with ill-health, unemployment and violence as a part of daily life.”
The four-year project, entitled New Public Consortia for Metropolitan Governance, will examine how municipal, state and federal bodies can work together to fight these conditions.
"My Ministry’s mission is to use our ingenuity and the resources of government at all levels to fight poverty," says Márcio Fortes, Minister of Cities for Brazil.
"The fundamental problem," says Boothroyd, "is that metropolitan governance in Brazil has not kept pace with that country’s rapid urbanization. So, Brazilians are interested in Greater Vancouver’s experiences in wrestling with regional growth, and in the Vancouver Agreement which enables inter-jurisdictional cooperation in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside."
UBC’s Canadian partners in the project are the Greater Vancouver Regional District, the City of Vancouver Planning Department, the Fraser Basin Council, and the University of Victoria’s Institute for Dispute Resolution.
The Brazilian partnership includes five federal Ministries, five major cities, and a university network to be built through the project with leadership from two universities in the State of Sao Paulo.
The project will contribute to formation of innovative inter-municipal structures (public consortia) for planning land use, social programs and policies, and delivery of services in the metropolitan areas of Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, Recife, Santarém and Santo André. Lessons learned from these initiatives will help Brazil to develop guidelines for forming and managing public consortia throughout the country.
The project will be inaugurated at meetings led by Minister Fortes during the time of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver.
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