In the absence of government investment delivering basic public utilities and affordable housing options needed to confront the global climate emergency, informal dwellers become citizen architects and urbanists, creating resilient habitats and adapting to overcome the many threats facing their sustainability. This action research seeks to learn from community-led regularization and urbanization experiences from a climate and gender justice perspective. The project aims to train and empower leaders in the Anchieta, Pantanal, and Toka communities. 

Through an alliance among informal dwellers, university-based researchers in architecture, urban planning and design, social work, housing movements, and non-profit organizations, this project applies a spatial, intersectional justice lens to learning from and supporting informal dwellers’ everyday urbanisms while joining social movements’ struggles for social transformation.