linguistic:paraphrasing, structural:summarization
Human development

In 1993, under mayor Patrus Ananias de Souza, the city started a series of innovations based on its citizens having the " right to food." These include, for example, creating farmers' markets in the town to enable direct sales and regularly surveying market prices and posting the results across the city. The city's process of participatory budgeting was linked with these innovations, as a result of which the infant mortality rate was reduced by 50% in a decade.

There is some evidence that these programs have helped support a higher quality of life for the local farmers partnering with the city and that this may be having positive effects on biodiversity in the Atlantic rainforest around the city. The city's development of these policies garnered the first "Future Policy Award" in 2009, awarded by the World Future Council, a group of 50 activists (including Frances Moore Lappé, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, and Youssou N'Dour) concerned with the development and recognition of policies to promote a just and sustainable future.

The city has undertaken an internationally heralded project called Vila Viva ("Living Village" in Portuguese) that promises to "urbanize" the poorest areas (favelas), relocating families from areas with high risk of floods and landslides but keeping them in the same neighborhood, paving main avenues to allow public transportation, police and postal service to have access. All the work is done with 80% of locals, reducing unemployment and increasing family income. Former mayor Fernando da Mata Pimentel was nominated for World Mayor in 2005 on the strength of these and other programs.