Article:

In recent years, several advances have occurred concerning the legitimacy ofprecarious informal settlements in Brazil. In spite of this progress in the legaldimension, little has been made concerning standards to ensure urban spacequality. The difficulties of reversing this exclusionary logic are due to severalcomplex factors. A factor less discussed, especially in the national literature, butthat has begun to draw the attention of scholars, is the invisibility of the informalcity. This research assumes that it is necessary to regulate the urban form ofprecarious informal settlements, in order to prevent the deterioration of urbanenvironmental quality. We highlight the importance to compile data about theirurban form and their built environment, in order to contribute to a reality-basedregulatory policy for these settlements, and this is the primary purpose of thisstudy. To address this question, we propose a method of measuring thesettlements' urban form, based on the City Information Modeling's theorical andpractical framework, which is applied to a case study in Fortaleza, Brazil.