ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a contribution to the discussion of marginalized urban spaces by addressing the following question: Is it possible to compare, conceptually, the Brazilian favela to the American ghetto, and what might we gain by making such a comparison? More specifically, in what ways may such an inquiry illuminate the American ghetto? One of the important points made by the Chicago School was that studying spatial mobility would reveal important tendencies in urban growth, thus turning mobility into a means for analyzing social, cultural, and psychosociological processes. Favelas and ghettos are socio-spatial phenomena that reflect deep-seated processes of social exclusion. The chapter suggests that the favela be considered part and parcel of the contemporary metropolis, but through a form of territorial production that reproduces itself on the fringes of schools of urbanism and urban planning, as well as of capital's rationalized actions.
