Del Bianco, C. Fondazione Romualdo Del Bianco-Life Beyond Tourism Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Email: corinnadelbianco@gmail.com Surveying Informal Settlements: The São Paulo Case Study of Jardim Filhos da Terra A defnition of an informal settlement An informal settlement consists of groups of people who occupy land for living purposes without having any legal claim to it and without conforming to codes and legal regulations. Squatting can be a conscious or unconscious housing movement. It can be caused by the need for housing in poor contexts, but also by political movements (Neuwirth, 2004). Slums are settlements which are characterized by informality and, according to UN-Habitat, lack at least of one of the following basic conditions for decent housing: adequate sanitation, water supply, durablility, adequate living space. 1 Key words: contemporary city, informal settlements, slums, intangible heritage, urban survey, favelas, Sao Paulo. Vol. 29 - n.1-2 (00-00) - 2014 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY Slums are no longer temporary solutions for the need for hous- ing, but are becoming permanent. The phenomenon of this state of informality as a solution to the urgent need for housing in exponentially growing cities and economies has been present in different ages and has been studied by architects and urban- ists throughout the history of architecture. Slums are present in most developing countries. Yet given that slums are a con- sistent reality in the urban fabric, they need to be studied indi- vidually during their development, as if they were the cells of a unique entity - the contemporary city. In the last two decades, there has been in-depth research on informal settlements. This research has focused both on the reasons for the phenomenon and on possible intervention meth- odologies. Research treats the slum as an integrated part of the contemporary city, studying it with the same tools as the formal ones. The research methodology used in “Jardim Fil- hos da Terra” combines the Saverio Muratori traditional survey method with modern tools of urban analysis. This was tested during a period of research in a favela of São Paulo in Brazil. São Paulo was chosen because the city has invested in in-depth research on this phenomenon and is making a strong effort to fnd a solution for the integration of the informal settlements into the urban fabric. From this survey it was fnally possible to make a taxonomy of the 68 surveyed plots, and from there to hypothesize the informal urban development. The greatest result was the understanding of housing evolution within the plot throughout time. That is a tool enabling planners to make previsions for the development of this informal fabric.