‘Post‐Third‐World City' or Neoliberal ‘City of Exception'? Rio de Janeiro in the Olympic Era

Abstract

This article considers processes of urban development within the context of mega‐event preparations in Rio de Janeiro. We begin with a brief overview of these development processes, highlighting their connections to political and economic change in recent years. Proponents of these mega‐event‐led initiatives argue that Rio is undergoing a period of inclusive growth and integration: a perspective we call here a ‘post‐Third‐World city' narrative of urban renewal. Critics, however, contend that urban officials are harnessing mega‐events (e.g. the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games) to push forward a neoliberal agenda of socially unjust policies benefiting the interests of capital and marginalizing the city's poor and especially its favelas (i.e. the ‘city‐of‐exception' thesis). In this article we explore the insights of these two perspectives and consider why they have grown popular in recent years. Though we side generally with the city‐of‐exception thesis, we argue that important geographic and historical particularities must also be accounted for. Without carefully situating analytical perspectives empirically—in particular, cases in which theoretical models are drawn from European and North American contexts—urban researchers risk concealing more than they reveal in analyses of rapidly developing countries like Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro’s favela assemblage: Accounting for the durability of an unstable object

“…More recently, the urban reform agenda associated with the 2016 Olympics served to reterritorialise the favela assemblage in both familiar and novel ways. Despite apparent the shift away from favela removals since redemocratisation, large numbers of favela residents have been evicted from their homes in recent years on diverse, and often highly questionable, legal grounds (Richmond and Garmany, 2016). These processes highlight the continued underlying legal insecurity of favelas in spite of the various nominal constitutional and legal protections supposed to avoid such outcomes.…”

Global Best Practice or Regulating Fiction? Street Vending, Zero Tolerance and Conflicts Over Public Space in New York, 1980–2000

“…However, it does add analytical nuance to a narrative of New York as a revanchist city that is sometimes overwrought and overdetermined. Following urban scholars who have questioned the analytical utility of broad‐brushed neoliberal narratives (Roy, ; Parnell and Robinson, ), I present the conflict over street vending as an example of public space regulation in the late twentieth century city that reveals the uneven nature and ‘fractal geometries’ of neoliberal regimes of regulations, where ‘different systems of power interact across the city’ (Richmond and Garamany, : 635) to shape on‐the‐ground outcome.…”

Start-up urbanism: New York, Rio de Janeiro and the global urbanization of technology-based economies

“…This hegemonic project, held together by pragmatic alliances and a transversal policy narrative incorporating both neo-developmentalist and neoliberal policies (Richmond and Garmany, 2016), has taken form in concomitance with the global financial crisis, which only mildly touched Brazil, whereas in previous years its fast-growing economy had created a fertile ground for digital media and e-commerce markets. This effervescence attracted foreign investors, private equity funds and bankers, giving rise to a boom in technology start-ups in Brazil.…”