Putting favelas on the map

Despite around 20% of Brazil's population living in slums, until now the favelas have remained predominantly unmapped. The inhabitants live in substandard housing and often have only basic sanitation or limited access to jobs or leisure activities, not to mention education and healthcare.

But will a new initiative to map favelas, using young, local "wiki-reporters" with GPS-equipped Nokia N95s and a mobile application that uses Google maps, be the start of an improved integration of these areas? Certainly it will provide information on what services are available and give the local community a better sense of legitimacy. Maybe it will even lead to an improvement of local infrastructure to a level that citizens of the world's 10th largest economy should perhaps expect?

Let's hope so, becausewith the number of people living in slums estimated to hit 2 billion globally in 2030,new approaches to supporting the needs of the rapidly expanding, poor, urban populationare urgently required.

Click here for the full article at MediaShift Idea Lab.