character of some of these antics, some say that Maia from the start "wanted to build an image purposely intended to appear as surprising as well as strange". In his first term, Maia focused on projects such as "", an urban renewal initiative targeting the city's commercial districts. The renewal would involve sidewalk repair and replacements, urban furnishings, street lights, landscaping, as well as aesthetic redesigning of each neighbourhood to give each its own specific visual identity. Rio-Cidade, however, was from the outset criticised perceived poor architectural choices, such as a giant cast iron obelisk built in Ipanema, together with an elevated causeway across a street that never opened to the public and was eventually razed in 2009 at the locals' behest. Rio-Cidade intended to provide infrastructure for the expansion of cable TV networks in wealthy districts. Other programs included the construction of a major urban highway called Linha Amarela, as well as the most important urbanization project in the favelas as recognized by UNESCO, Favela-Bairro, a project started with a credit of 180 million US$ from the Inter-American Development Bank. Favela-Bairro was a programme concerned mostly with providing basic utilities and public services (sewage systems, sidewalks, etc.) to a number of existing shanty towns, while renovating housing and its surroundings in aesthetical terms, as in Rio-Cidade. Favela-Bairro, however, as much as it was presented as a plan for drastic improvement of actual living conditions, was seen as having failed in one of its chief concerns, that of blurring the boundaries between the "formal" city and the shantytown: in the words of scholar Janice Perlman, "there's still no doubt about where the asfalto ends and the morro begins". At the same time, by stating that favela residents could have access to proper urbanism if they behaved in an "orderly" fashion, Favela-Bairro perpetuated the stigma long associated to shantytown dwellers. Finally, Favela-Bairro was also seem as very limited in scope, as it concerned itself with only 27% of all Rio shanty-towns. After his first mayoral term, which was succeeded by one of his associates, architect Luiz Paulo Conde, Maia chose to distance himself from the legacy of Favela Bairro, and the programme came to be fostered by Conde, who had meanwhile distanced himself from Maia. In the end, Favela Bairro achieved what was called by some as "anecdotal success at best". Similar criticism met many of Maia's other projects, as in