Learning from the Favelas: Can spatial regenerative strategies for political and social integration be a source of knowledge for the formal city? Part 1 Dissertation 2014 Jonas Bertlind Central Saint Martins, UAL | UK The list of programmes that seek to ‘upgrade’ the urban condition in Brazil and South America’ throughout the last century’ is long. For example, the John Turner initiated PREVI-program (in Chile); despite apparent good intentions, the amount of people living in poverty has increased. Lately South America has been acknowledged for its recent democratically sincere intentions to initiate projects in various cities. Medellin and Bogota have been in the focal point and have been praised by many, but a lot of resources have also allegedly been invested in integration programs in Rio. The Manguinhos Complex in Rio was part of the ‘Small Scale Big Change’ at the MoMA in New York, and was also published in the book with the same name.Having long been fascinated by the situation in Rio and other cities in South America, with growing poverty at the same time that the economy is growing rapidly. In this dissertation I investigated just how successful the intended participatory process of the integration these projects has been, and what made them successful or where they fail. Tutor(s) Shumi Bose