Panem et circenses versus the right to the city (centre) in Rio de Janeiro: A short report
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13604813.2012.709725
ISSN1470-3629
Autores Tópico(s)Homelessness and Social Issues
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Andrea Gibbons for orthographic corrections and stylistic suggestions. I am also grateful to Rafael Gonçalves de Almeida, Tatiana Tramontani Ramos and Fábio Caffé/Imagens do Povo for some of the photographs used here; furthermore, I thank Rafael for the help with the map. Notes I focused on these issues in the paper 'Which Right to which City? In Defence of Political–Strategic Clarity', Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements 2(1) (2010), pp. 315–333. Available on the Internet (http://interface-articles.googlegroups.com/web/3Souza.pdf) on 27 May 2010. The theme of accessibility was interestingly worked out by Kevin Lynch in his admirable book Good City Form (1994). Sem-teto literally means 'roofless'. It must be explained that in Brazil, the expression sem-teto has often been used to describe not homeless people, but rather a specific kind of squatter. Sem-teto activists are often highly politicised squatters and in fact correspond to a specific social movement whose importance has increased since the end of the 1990s. An ocupação is a sem-teto settlement, that is, a squatted building or plot of land. Undoubtedly, the legal security of tenure is a traditional and legitimate demand of people who live in segregated spaces and who suffer all sorts of discrimination, intimidation and violence. The question is how this regularisation also lends itself to a facilitation of (re)insertion of spaces in the formal circuit of the 'world of commodity'. What is more: when we consider the ocupações of the sem-teto movement, we see that they have often been interesting environments for experimenting with alternative forms of organisation and socialisation (in some cases reaching even to self-management and very horizontal forms of political organisation); in this case, a regularisation programme may, depending on its concrete nature, disrupt a whole set of relationships, and damage certain initiatives and activities of the residents. Values and habits cultivated with difficulty, such as regular meetings, shared responsibilities, systematic cooperation, task rotation, etc. may well be undermined, being completely or almost completely replaced by individualism and privatism. According to estimates made by the João Pinheiro Foundation (Déficit habitacional no Brasil—Municípios selecionados e microrregiões geográficas, 2nd edn. Belo Horizonte: Fundação João Pinheiro, 2005), the Brazilian housing deficit has amounted in 2000 to 7.2 million units. However, according to a report in July 2010 of the Ministry of Cities, based on surveys of the João Pinheiro Foundation itself, the estimated housing deficit in Brazil in 2008 was around 5.6 million households, of which 83% were located in urban areas (http://www.cidades.gov.br/noticias/deficit-habitacional-brasileiro-e-de-5-6-milhoes/). (For 2007, the João Pinheiro Foundation, in a study dated June 2009, had estimated the housing deficit of approximately 6.3 million units, of which 82.6% were located in urban areas [http://www.fjp.gov.br/index.php/servicos/81-servicos-cei/70-deficit-habitacional-no-brasil].) The numbers of the João Pinheiro Foundation on the housing deficit in Brazil seem conservative to me; be that as it may, the magnitude of the numbers referring to household stock is in fact the same, even if the values in reality are somewhat higher. According to figures published by the Ministry of Cities, the vacant homes in condition to be occupied plus those under construction in Brazil amounted in 2008 to 7.2 million real estate units, of which 5.2 million are located in urban areas (see link above); and according to the João Pinheiro Foundation, in Brazil would be about 7.3 million unoccupied real estate units, of which approximately 5.4 million are located in urban areas (of this total amount, 6.2 million would be in condition to be occupied, the rest would be under construction or in ruins, this latter corresponding to a minority of about 300,000 units [see link above]). See Harvey (1985) Harvey, D. 1985. "'The urban process under capitalism: a framework for analysis'". In The Urbanization of Capital, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar]. As far as Lefebvre is concerned, it is worth starting with The Urban Revolution (the edition I have consulted is the Spanish one: La revolución urbana [Lefebvre, 1983 Lefebvre, H. La revolución urbana, Madrid: Alianza Editorial. 1983 [1970] [Google Scholar]]) and then read his The Production of Space (Lefebvre, 1981 Lefebvre, H. La production de l'espace, Paris: Anthropos. 1981 [1974] [Google Scholar]). The official webpage of the project is: http://www.portomaravilhario.com.br/ The concept of 'urban regime' was proposed by Clarence Stone (see, for instance, Stone, 1993 Stone, C. 1993. 'Urban regimes and the capacity to govern: a political economy approach'. Journal of Urban Affairs, 15(1): 1–28. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to characterise the combinations of institutional arrangements and economic interests (especially class interests and pressures) that express themselves as specific management and planning styles. Some urban regimes are more open to pressure from workers and permeable to popular participation, while others are more repressive and refractory to any kind of more or less progressive agenda. Even if Stone's classification should not be unthinkingly transposed to a very different reality from the USA, such as Brazil, the idea behind the concept is a useful one in itself. See http://www.cidadeolimpica.com/instalacoes-olimpicas-vilas-de-arbitros-e-midia-comecam-a-nascer/ 'Sub-imperialism' (subimperialismo) is a term coined by the Brazilian social scientist Ruy Mauro Marini (see, for instance, Marini, 2000 Marini, R. M. Dialética da dependência, Petrópolis: Vozes and CLACSO. 2000 [1973] [Google Scholar], pp. 67–72) as early as the 1970s. The Brazilian case is particularly exemplary of this kind of country: on the one hand, we are talking about one of the most unequal countries in the world; on the other, the size and complexity of Brazil's economy, the active participation of Brazilian firms (from the oil giant Petrobras to Banco do Brasil to construction companies) as investors in other countries (especially in Latin America and Africa) and last but not least Brazil's geopolitical ambitions as a 'regional power', really seem to justify the use of this concept. See, for instance, Castoriadis (1999) Castoriadis, C. 1999. "'Quelle démocratie?'". In Figures du pensable: les carrefours du labyrinthe—VI, Paris: Seuil. [Google Scholar]. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMarcelo Lopes de SouzaMarcelo Lopes de Souza is a professor at the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he coordinates a research group whose main focus is the relationship between social relations and space and particularly the spatiality of social change.
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