for many year now, there has been a substantial effort to redevelop, urbanize, and integrate favelas, with the intent of both improving living conditions for the residents, social and cultural integration, and increasing security in these areas and in the city as a whole.

while the desire to improve favelas has existed for decades, a reenergized effort and an array of new programs were both spurred and made possible by brazil's remarkable economic expansion of the last decade, with some impressive results shown on occasion of the major international events hosted in the city, such as the united nations conference on sustainable development of 2012 and the 2014 fifa world cup.

prior to this, there had been several attempts to either remove portions of favelas by relocating residents to public housing structures, or to gentrify and develop these areas - many of these programs had mixed results at best.