Contradictions of the Porto Maravilha neoliberal experiment in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This paper aims to raise some theses or arguments about the specificities of the neoliberalization process in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which may also contribute to the understanding of the Brazilian and Latin American urban context. Results allow the development of three thesis about the contradictions surrounding Porto Maravilha renewal project. The first one states that the understanding of urban transformations in Porto Maravilha must consider the specific characteristics of the urban configuration of the city (a hybrid, unequal and combined urban order), such as the role of black culture and the African diaspora in its configuration. The second thesis argues that Porto Maravilha constitutes a neoliberal experiment triggered by a coalition of interests, but, at the same time, its implementation is constrained by the hybrid, unequal and combined urban order – which the first modifies in a process of multiscale creative destruction that produces a local version of a global phenomenon. The third thesis argues that urban renewal projects in Rio de Janeiro promote a kind of elitization, peripheral gentrification, characterized by whitewashing processes and attempts to annihilate black culture. Social resistances, however, result in the reproduction of the hybrid urban order, uneven and combined. Research involved several data collection techniques, specially, documental analysis and direct observation.