Cidade de Deus favela lies on the western outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Figure 1). In 2002 it was used as the setting for a film which won several prestigious awards and took the name from its English translation, ‘City of God’. The film tells of young people growing up in the poverty and hopelessness of a neighbourhood with poor housing, disease, few services and no opportunity for education or employment — and their slide into the drug and gang culture of the area.
This photograph shows tightly packed houses and narrow alleys, with the exception of a few main roads. The houses are poor quality, with no gardens, yards or open spaces except for the banks of the heavily polluted river. Nearly 40,000 people live in the cramped conditions of this favela.
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