Strategic urban projects for informal settlement upgrading in Brazil, Indonesia and Colombia: Partnership, vision and action

The strategic urban project (SUP) approach has become an important mode of urban renewal in both developed and developing contexts. In the last few decades, the application of this approach has been extended from flagship projects at key locations in Western countries, to informal settlement upgrading in developing countries. However, there is a lack of a clear conceptual framework for meaningful understanding of the achievements and limitations of SUPs in the context of informal settlement upgrading. Our understanding of how the SUP approach deals with the issues of informal settlements is limited. This paper fills the research gap by developing such a framework and applying it to compare three representative cases, namely the Favela–Bairro Programme in Rio de Janeiro, the Social Urbanism Strategy in Medellin, and the Kampung Improvement Programme (KIP) in Surabaya.