Cingapura project

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (July 2006)

This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The Cingapura project is a low-cost housing initiative in São Paulo, Brazil. It is designed to try and move the poor population from favelas (shanty towns), where one quarter of people in São Paulo now live, into more permanent structures. These structures are often called 'Superblocks'.

They were intended to have a supply of electricity, a good water supply and sewer pipes. On top of this, residential security guards were to be employed to reduce crimes which were/are rife throughout the favelas in Brazil. Much of the work was to be done by the residents of the favelas themselves, the project being dubbed a 'self help' project. The existing favelas were to be cleared and building materials provided for the builders for free. One of the major difficulties in building on the sites of the favelas was the large slopes on which they are built. This difficult terrain was the only reason the owners of the land did not use it. Levelling the land was very expensive and eventually proved too expensive, only a tenth of the proposed apartments were completed.

Those that were built were not very successful, as many of the families from the favelas found that the new apartments were too much of a change of environment. They did not like the fact they couldn't extend on their new apartments, and many attempted to bring their livestock into the flats. Only 14 of the 140,000 projected apartments were actually built.

The U.S government loaned the cingapura project $9 billion for rehousing people in bad housing to at least favelas so they can have better housing.