Brazil counts approximately 6000 favelas: poor neighborhoods with poor-quality housing usually located on illegally occupied land. Fortaleza is the country’s 4th city in numbers of favelas, ranking right behind Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador.

Rio de Janeiro harbors nearly 960 favelas, which represent approximately a third of its urban population. There are 509 in Fortaleza, with a population of 396 370. That is 18% of the city population, when the average on a national scale reaches only 6%. Unlike Rio, the favelas in Fortaleza are truly integrated with the rest of the city, as indicated by the red areas on this map.