Rio de Janeiro and the 2016 Olympics – a lasting legacy?

Keywords:

• Rio de Janeiro
• capitality
• economic development
• mega events
• Olympics
• legacy

Rio de Janeiro: a city named Brazil

The city of Rio de Janeiro was the capital of Brazil for nearly 200 years (1763–1960). During this period, Rio established itself as the axis of Brazilian ‘capitality’. This concept was developed by an art historian and former mayor of Rome, Giulio Argan¹ who argues that every country in the world has a city that works as its international benchmark.

For example, when one thinks of the USA, the recurring image is that of New York and not Washington. When thinking of Australia, the benchmark is Sydney, not Canberra.

While Rio was the capital of the country, the economic dynamism of the city itself, of its metropolitan region and of the whole State of Rio de Janeiro-ERJ stemmed primarily from its status as the axis of capitality.

In 1960, the capital of Brazil was transferred to Brasilia in the midwest region of the country. This change gradually became established during the 1970s. Consequently, the city of Rio, its metropolitan region and the whole state went through the painful process of losing its economic and social dynamism. According to data of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE 2013),² the ERJ’s economy between 1970 and 2011³ showed the highest loss of participation in the national GDP of all federal units, dropping from 16.7% to 11.2%.

The regional strategy established to replace Rio’s previous economic dynamism as the Capital of the Republic has not succeeded. This is partly because the transition of the capital to Brasilia in the 1960s was a gradual one and the local population were largely unconvinced that consolidation of the new capital would actually take place. At the same time, even today the ‘capitality’ history of the city of Rio de Janeiro is responsible for its social habits and focus, within both the city itself and its area of influence, Rio de Janeiro State as a whole. As a result, the local focus is primarily on the national rather than the local themes. For example, none of the Master’s and Doctor’s Programs in Economics in universities located in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro-RMRJ cover research in Regional Economics.

After 1960, specific political issues contributed to Rio’s economic and social decline. The city of Rio’s political representatives at the time were highly influential in the national debate,⁴ and consequently Rio was particularly affected by the process of forfeiture of political mandate by those who opposed the authoritarian regime imposed on Brazil when the civil-military coup took place in 1964. A conservative and populist politician named Chagas Freitas took over the political hegemony, first in the city and later across the ERJ, establishing a markedly clientelist political logic that disrupted the public sector in the region.⁵

The effects of disruption to the public administration within the ERJ and the region’s economic decline post 1960/1970 can be observed, for example, in Rio’s 15th position in public high school results among the country’s 27 states in 2011 (Ministry of Education 2011). This is despite having the second highest state GDP and its position as an important cultural centre in the country. Similarly, a percentage ranking of slum dwellers, in relation to the total population, applied to the capitals of all Brazilian states in the South and Southeast regions, reveals that in 2010 the percentage of the population residing in slums in the city of Rio de Janeiro was 22.04%. This compares to 13.79% in Porto Alegre, 12.96% in Belo Horizonte, 11.42% in São Paulo, 9.32% in Curitiba, 8.10% in Vitória and 4.20% in Florianópolis (IBGE 2011).

It was only in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century that the city and State of Rio de Janeiro began to show some recovery in their social and economic profile and their public structure. Between 2011 and 2012, for example, formal employment in the ERJ grew by 2.6%, compared with an increase in Brazil as a whole of 2.5% (Ministry of Labour and Employment 2012).

This improvement is mainly related to the expansion of activities connected to the extraction of oil and gas in Brazil, strongly concentrated in the ERJ’s coastal area. It is also a consequence of the ‘política de conteúdo nacional’ (policy of national content), which was established by the current Brazilian Federal Government. This has stimulated the creation and/or expansion of industries, services and research to meet the demand created by activities connected to the oil and gas sector, in addition to attracting important private investments (new motor vehicles manufacturing plants, the expansion of steel and petrochemical activities, to name just a few) to the region. This is reflected in the US$44.9 bn investment in oil and gas pumping and US$16 bn in the Transformation industry (Federação das Indústrias do Estado do Rio de Janeiro 2012). Another reason for the economic recovery of Rio de Janeiro is the expansion of public investment stimulated by the various international mega events Rio has hosted since 2007. These include the Pan American Games in 2007, Military World Games in 2011, Rio + 20 in 2012, World Youth Day organised by the Catholic Church in 2013, the Confederations Football Cup in 2013 and the World Football Cup in 2014, and will culminate with the 2016 Olympics. More than anything else, it is hoped that by hosting these mega events Rio attracts both foreign and Brazilian tourists (from other parts of the country), as a result of the positive visibility the city has in national and international media.

However, there are still many challenges to the consolidation of a new level of socioeconomic and public management for Rio de Janeiro, mainly because the current social and infrastructure liabilities are still very heavy, especially in the low income areas of the city and of RMRJ peripheral municipalities.

In this scenario, some actions have become urgent if Rio de Janeiro is to be consistently revitalised. On one side, it is necessary to expand the region’s obsolete productive structure, which is concentrated in just a few sectors, such as oil refining and iron and steel industries, and the tax collection base for public spending. It is also essential to improve planning practice, enabling the creation of a strategy and the coordination of integrated policies aimed at reducing social inequalities and bolstering employment and earnings within the city of Rio de Janeiro, throughout its metropolitan area and in the State as a whole.

It is also essential to improve the policy of both upgrading the skills base of human resources and tendering in the public sector, within the realms of the state government. This policy was initiated in 2007, but is still very diffident. This perpetuates the lack of skilled personnel as well as an aged public machine of unmotivated professionals, subdued by the force of decades of governance under the logic of patronage. Examples include the CEPERJ Foundation, the agency which is responsible for organising the state database, which has only one statistician in its workforce.

Another feature to be taken into account when establishing a strategy for the socioeconomic development of Rio de Janeiro is its cosmopolitanism, specifically demonstrated in the context of Rio’s ‘capitality’ history, manifest, for example, in the extreme musicality and hospitality of its people. Similarly, the natural beauty of the sea and the mountains mean that the various regions of the state are enchanting, in addition to their important historical and cultural heritage. Consequently, they should be considered in the formulation of integrated policies for the consolidation of a virtuous circle of development for Rio de Janeiro.

We should also highlight the issue of universality regarding socioeconomic development actions, which should be conducted while taking into account human dignity, such as, social inclusion of the disabled, for instance. Thus, an integrated development strategy must cater not only to the need for citizens to have ample access to public services of any kind, but also to the promotion of physical accessibility, adopting concepts of social equality for moving around and interaction in public spaces and buildings.

Olympics for regional development

The Olympic Games which will be held in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 2016 should be used as a tool for the effective reduction of strong social inequalities in the city itself, in the RMRJ and throughout the ERJ. In our view, this is the most important response to the recent popular demonstrations in Brazil, which question the legitimacy of the country hosting the 2016 Olympics. The importance of such demonstrations is not that they pointed towards concrete policy formulations, because that did not happen. Rather, their importance lies in the mobilisation of many Brazilians who, with enthusiasm and a sense of political duty, expressed their deeply-felt view that there is no sense in hosting the Olympics if the event is not to contribute towards overcoming the inequalities and injustices experienced daily in the country and in the ERJ.

There is a great expectation in the official discourse that the hosting of Mega events will not only raise the international visibility of the city but also provide major opportunities for increasing investment. According to the Federação das Indústrias do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (2012), public (Federal, State and Municipal) and private investments – including those in hotels, infrastructure and the refurbishment/construction of Olympic facilities – in the city will be about US$ 7.5 bn.

Still, in Rio de Janeiro there is no guarantee that the opportunity to host such big events has been or will be properly explored and exploited in the structuring of inclusive socioeconomic development policies. This should be based on prioritising the expansion of social rights and citizenship in the region. What kind of guidelines could support the design of a regional development strategy directed towards such policies in Rio de Janeiro?

Both the city and the State of Rio de Janeiro have a sporting tradition, which makes it possible to host land, sea and mountain sporting events at any time of the year. As the main host of mega sporting events, the city of Rio de Janeiro, if appropriate strategies were put in place, could even become the main hub for sporting events in Latin America.

Another relevant issue closely linked to the infrastructure difficulties faced by the population of the city and the State of Rio de Janeiro is the need to clean up, as a priority and urgently, the heavily polluted Guanabara Bay. The bay surrounds several municipalities of the metropolis of Rio, which have a serious shortage of water and sewage networks.

Although there is a project to remove the pollution from the Guanabara Bay before the Olympic Games in 2016, uncertainties about how this will be achieved persist, both as a consequence of the destructuralisation of the public machinery of Rio de Janeiro State, and the delays in planned investment in infrastructure. A possible alternative has already been considered for the Olympic sea events: their displacement to another ERJ seashore city. This would solve the immediate issue of ensuring that these events could take place, but would leave a huge gap in what could be one of the main social, environmental, economic and symbolic legacies of the Olympics – the completion of the clean-up of the Guanabara Bay.

Another point of concern in the 2016 Olympics project is that a significant number of the sporting events will take place in an area of urban expansion of Rio – Barra da Tijuca and Zona Oeste – and not in a central deprived area as was the case in Barcelona and London.

This aspect is problematic because changes in the demographic pattern of major international cities, as well as of Brazilian cities, have led urban policy makers towards supporting increased urban density in place of new expansion.

Therefore, the fact that the infrastructure investments currently in progress in Rio de Janeiro – having both international mega events and the Olympics as their key mobilising factors – are happening predominantly in Zona Oeste and Barra da Tijuca, an area of expansion in the city, most likely will induce a significant increase: (1) in the number of housing units in that area, encouraging a bigger urban sprawl and reducing the number of residents per square kilometre in the city (at a time when the population tends to stop growing) and (2) in the cost of maintenance and investment in urban infrastructure, because it is an area of expansion. It should also be noted that heavy investment in Rio’s expanding areas has been occurring despite serious problems in sectors such as public and mass transport in already consolidated areas of the city and the metropolis. The underground in the city of Rio has been expanded to head towards Barra da Tijuca, where only approximately 5% of the city´s residents live, according to the last census of IBGE.⁶ Meanwhile, the rail transport system, which integrates regions where 70% of the RMRJ population (Osorio 2013) live and work, has not been given the same priority in terms of investment in mass transport.

Another issue that fosters uncertainty regarding the legacy of mega scale events and the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro refers to the fact that the city of Rio is presently connected to 20 other municipalities of the RMRJ, comprising a single urban area totalling 11,835,708 inhabitants, according to the 2010 IBGE Census. This reality indicates the need to create an integrated metropolitan policy in this urban area for its 21 municipalities, encompassing sectors such as mass transport, health and sanitation, urban planning, culture policies, etc. However, this issue has not yet been objectively included in Rio de Janeiro´s political agenda, reinforcing the uncertainty as to whether hosting the 2016 Olympics will leave behind any valuable legacy consolidating structural and lasting foundations to the everyday life of social citizenship in the region.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mauro Osorio

Mauro Osorio is an economist with a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the Institute of Urban and Regional Research and Planning of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), a professor at the National Law School of FND/UFRJ, and a coordinator of the Observatory for Studies on Rio de Janeiro. He is connected to the FND/UFRJ Master’s Program in Law and Institutions.

Maria Helena Versiani

Maria Helena Versiani is a historian, a Doctor in History, Political and Cultural Heritage from the Brazilian Centre for Research and Documentation of Contemporary History/Getulio Vargas Foundation, a researcher at the Museum of the Republic, and a member of the Research Group of the Observatory for Studies on Rio de Janeiro. She is connected to the FND/UFRJ Master’s Program in Law and Institutions.

Notes

1. Historian Marly Silva Da Motta (2001, p. 24), based on Giulio Argan’s concept of ‘capitality’ (Argan 1964), defines capital cities ‘as place of politics and culture, as nucleus of intellectual sociability and symbolic production, representing, each in its own way, the role of focus of civilization, core of modernity, theatre of power and place of memory’.

2. Available at: http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/economia/contasregionais/2011/default.shtm (Accessed 25 November 2013).

3. With the change of the capital to Brasilia, the city of Rio de Janeiro became the State of Guanabara, separated from the State of Rio de Janeiro. In 1974, however, the former State of Rio de Janeiro and what was then called Guanabara merged, forming what is currently the ERJ, with the city of Rio as its capital. For this reason, when measuring ERJ’s economy, in Brazil, between 1970 and 2011, the sum of Rio’s GDP and the former State of Rio’s GDP was used for the year 1970. The ERJ currently encompasses 92 municipalities.

4. On this subject, see Osorio (2005) and Versiani (2007).

5. On the impacts of a particular region’s political logic in the economic dynamism of that region, see North (1990) and Putnam (1993).

6. Available at: http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/censo2010/resultados_gerais_amostra/resultados_gerais_amostra_tab_uf_microdados.shtm (Accessed 16 April 2012).