Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Responsive image

Draft:Janice Elaine Perlman

  • Comment: YouTube is not generally a reliable source and interviews are not independent sources. Theroadislong (talk) 21:19, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment: she may well be notable but this is woefully short on independent reliable sources. Theroadislong (talk) 18:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment: She has multiple reviews for multiple works, and I have added these to the article. This seems quite long and detailed, and could use a trimming to focus on key points. DaffodilOcean (talk) 06:52, 18 January 2025 (UTC)


Janice Elaine Perlman
Alma materCornell University (BA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)
Known forResearch and policy on Global Urbanization, Informal Settlements; Founder of The Mega-Cities Project
SpousesFrederick Charles Spreyer, Jr. (m. 1988; died 2015)
Scientific career
FieldsUrban Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Social Sciences

Janice Perlman is an American urban research scholar, policy advisor and global non-profit founder.[1]. Her work encompasses research, practice and public policy, with a focus on marginalized urban populations in Brazil[2] and internationally.

Perlman has researched global urbanization and the growth of the informal sector. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Urban Studies from MIT[3] and a B.A. in Anthropology and Latin American Studies from Cornell University. Her first book, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Politics and Poverty in Rio de Janeiro (UC Press)[4][5][6], won the C. Wright Mills Award[7] in 1976 and was selected as number one of the five “Best books on the economy as if people mattered” in 2023[8]. It is based on her experience living in three favelas (informal settlements) in Rio de Janeiro from 1968 to 1969, where she conducted in-depth life history interviews with 750 residents, most of them migrants from rural villages[9][10]. Her research challenged perceptions of informal settlements as a problem, emphasizing their role as part of urban solutions.

Thirty years later, she returned to Rio to find and interview the original participants, their children and grandchildren[11][12]. The results of this longitudinal study were published as FAVELA: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (Oxford University Press, 2010)[13][14]. This book won the 2010 Publisher’s PROSE Award in two separate categories[15].

Her most recent article on this topic, “From Demon to Darling: Child of the Dark or Model for Sustainable Cities? Fifty years of perception, policy and reality in Rio’s favelas”[16]. It will appear in the forthcoming book on the legacy of John Turner on community-led housing (University College London Press, 2025). The book is the result of a panel presented in the World Urban Forum in 2024[17] in Cairo, Egypt.

Perlman is an advocate for the shift in policy to upgrading informal settlements on-site rather than eradicating them and removing the residents to remote public housing[18]. As a consultant to international development agencies, including the World Bank, the Inter American Development Bank, UNDP, UN-Habitat, USAID and others, she had direct influence on their urban agenda.

In 1987, she founded a global non-profit called The Mega-Cities Project whose mission is shorten the lag time between innovative ideas and implementation in urban problem-solving[19]. Perlman established teams in 20 of the world's largest cities to help identify innovative ideas and share them with other cities.

To do that she left her tenured position in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley[20]. After leaving Berkeley, Perlman taught in several universities in the U.S. and abroad and developed two innovative educational projects that continue to thrive: 1)  “Cities for the 21st Century” for the International Honors Program, a semester-long travel/study trip to New York, Mumbai, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and Washington DC; and 2) a new undergraduate program on Comparative Urban Studies at Trinity College.

  1. ^ "Urban Informality - Marginal or Mainstream? - Janice Perlman, the Megacities Project | UN-Habitat".
  2. ^ "Seminário de centro da ONU recebe influente pesquisadora norte-americana sobre favelas do Rio".
  3. ^ "Bringing the Margin to the Center". 26 October 2020.
  4. ^ Dean, Warren (1977-09-01). "The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro, by Janice E. Perlman". Political Science Quarterly. 92 (3): 567–569. doi:10.2307/2148533. ISSN 0032-3195. JSTOR 2148533.
  5. ^ Purcell, Susan Kaufman (December 1978). "The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. By Janice E. Perlman. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1976. Pp. xxi + 341. $14.95.)". American Political Science Review. 72 (4): 1484–1485. doi:10.2307/1954646. ISSN 0003-0554. JSTOR 1954646.
  6. ^ Perlman, Janice E. (1976). The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-02596-7.
  7. ^ "The Society for the Study of Social Problems | Past Winners".
  8. ^ "The best books on the economy as if people mattered".
  9. ^ Margolis, Maxine (1979). "The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro . Janice E. Perlman". Economic Development and Cultural Change. 27 (3): 589–596. doi:10.1086/451126.
  10. ^ Schwartz, Norman B.; Ackerman, Kenneth J. (1979). "Myth, social reality, and the urban poor". Reviews in Anthropology. 6 (4): 453–464. doi:10.1080/00988157.1979.9977469.
  11. ^ "Pesquisadora americana alerta sobre futuro de comunidades periféricas | Mundo e Ciência | O Dia".
  12. ^ Medrado, Andrea (2017-06-13). "Book Review: Perlman, Janice (2010) Favela. Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN – 978-0-19-536836-9". Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture. 8 (1): 203. doi:10.16997/wpcc.182. ISSN 1744-6716.
  13. ^ "Essential Reading on Rio's Favelas [Book Review] – RioOnWatch".
  14. ^ "Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro; Ordinary Families, Extraordinary Lives: Assets and Poverty Reduction in Guayaquil, 1978-2004 | Foreign Affairs". May 2010.
  15. ^ https://proseawards.com/docs/ad_Prose2010Awards_PW_LJBleed.pdf
  16. ^ Perlman, Janice (January 2022). "From Demon to Darling: Child of the Dark or Model for Sustainable Cities? Fifty years of perception, policy, and reality in Rio's favelas". Sustainability.
  17. ^ "The legacy and topicality of John F.C. Turner on housing policy and lessons for community-led development | WUF". 23 September 2024.
  18. ^ "Bringing the Margin to the Center". 26 October 2020.
  19. ^ "Our History".
  20. ^ https://150w.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/department_of_city_and_regional_planning_dcrp_women_urap_daisy_son.pdf

Previous Page Next Page








Responsive image

Responsive image