Global urbanism and mega events planning in Rio de Janeiro amid crisis and austerity

ABSTRACT

Putting Milton Santos’ theorisations in conversation with post-colonial conceptualization of global urbanism, the paper discusses the legacy of mega-events planning in Rio de Janeiro in times of austerity, through the prism of the nexus between globalization and urbanism. Three main interrelated dimensions of the Carioca global urbanism and of the clash between global aspirations and local realities are highlighted and discussed in order to challenge dominant conceptualization of both mega-events planning and austerity urbanism: a) the mobilization of an ensemble of high-tech fantasies as globalist imaginaries of urban planning; b) a complex reconfiguration of the core–periphery geographies of knowledge as a key trait of a perverse globalization; (c) a multitude of discourses and practices of insurgent urbanism as a source of radical imagination against the imperatives of austerity.

KEYWORDS:

• Mega-events planning
• global urbanism
• austerity
• Rio de Janeiro

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I refer above all to Cultural Political Economy (CPE), a pluralist approach with post-disciplinary horizons, which explores the discursive and extra-discursive mechanisms that select, articulate and institutionalise some economic and political imaginaries, and in this context, also highlights the role of agency and of governmental technologies. In this perspective, the crisis conjuncture represents a real-time laboratory to analyse whether and how hegemonic discourse on urban development and city planning are questioned and alternative discourses emerge. At this regards, see Jessop and Sum (2010).

2 A sample of more than 30 international scientific works (articles, book chapters and monographs) has been collected and analysed. Grey literature includes institutional documents about Olympics organization and Rio’s urban planning, Specifically, concerning Olympic documents have been reviewed the Olympic Bids Candidature files (http://www.rio2016.com/en/organising-committee/transparency/documents) and the Olympic and Para-Olympics Legacy Plan (http://www.rio.rj.gov.br/dlstatic/10112/4379008/4129850/RIO2016_estudos_ING.pdf; http://www.apo.gov.br/index.php/legacy). Concerning city planning, documents from the official website of municipal council have been analysed, such as the Strategic Plans of the city (http://www.conselhodacidade.com/v3/pdf/planejamento_estrategico_13-16.pdf). Finally, the Dossiers on Mega-events and Human Rights Violation of the local and national Networks of Popular Committees have been reviewed (http://www.apublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/DossieViolacoesCopa.pdf; https://comitepopulario.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/dossie_comitepopularcoparj_2013.pdf).

3 Santos distinguishes an upper circuit that is the direct result of technological modernisation and is oriented towards the advanced capitalist world, and a lower circuit consisting of more traditional and small scale activities and especially concerned with poor population.

4 See also Davies 2018.

5 Drawing on François Perroux distinction between banal space and economic space, Santos identifies the former with the space of everyday experience, the inhabited and used territories, through which human solidarity can create a new history.

6 Santos talks in terms of verticalities to indicate a set of points forming a space of flows through which big companies and other hegemonic actors regulate the entirety of space, by imposing their rationality. The horizontalities, on their part, are made up of zones of continuity, where the presence of other rationalities is admitted and multiple local solidarities occur. Horizontal processes are generally submitted to vertical powers, but they function also as space of insurgency towards verticalities (Santos 2017, 57–60).