Vertical city: how life is organized in Brazilian favelas

Brazil's favelas are more than just slums, but a complex system of spontaneous urbanization. Vertical growth, stair-stepped streets, homemade utility networks, and life subservient to gravity and tropical rainfall create a unique model of a city outside the norm.

The utility networks in the favelas resemble a living, chaotically growing organism. Electricity is supplied through unauthorized connections, forming gigantic knots of hundreds of tangled cables over the heads of passersby. Despite the fire hazard, this system provides light to every level of the superstructure. Wired internet is organized similarly: amateur providers install fiber optic cables on roofs and facades, creating a web of connectivity where official services fail.

Water supply is directly dependent on gravity. A blue plastic tank is installed on the roof of the highest floor of each building. Water is pumped from a centralized network during supply hours and then distributed down through the floors. The sewer system, however, remains the most vulnerable link: due to the complex terrain and the lack of deep-laid pipes, wastewater is often discharged into open concrete gutters running along the stepped streets, making the vertical city dependent on tropical downpours that wash waste down to the foothills.