Social inequalities and the policies of the public service contributed to the expansion of poor and spontaneous housing in Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, the types of popular housings evolved through time, adjusting themselves to the different urban policies and to the city's urban development. Despite its spontaneous character, popular housings go along with urban transformation. Since 2000 a new type of popular and spontaneous housing has arisen on the borders of an old industrial highway called ‘Avenida Brasil', located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Inhabitant from favelas invaded old lands of abandoned factories. The process of occupation of the lands, the conversion of space into housing, and the rules established therein, reveal that this type of invasion – ‘de facto shared ownership' – is a new case in terms of popular spontaneous housing in Rio de Janeiro. This research raises the question of the representation of this new type of housing in the city and in the actual society. I studied the urban development planning of the favelas of which the occupants came from originally, and the different public policies concerning precarious housing in order to understand the ‘de facto shared ownership' as a product of the urban evolution of Rio de Janeiro. The analysis of the constructed space of housing is developed in relation to urban and community social space. It stresses the transformation of a culture produced from the marginality of space in the city, and which is articulated to the type of co-ownership housing
