Processos de urbanização

The notion of planetary urbanization has recently mobilized different strands in the field of urban studies and has generated extensive debates. This emerging research agenda aims to revise inherited concepts and produce a new vocabulary of urbanization through the construction of an ex-centric perspective that dislocates the focus of analysis from its conventional center: the city. The idea of extended urbanization is thus an imperative concept for it operationalizes this theoretical decentering and permits the exploration of urban questions beyond city-centrism, while encompassing urban agglomerations. This article discusses the conception of extended urbanization. We examine its vital insertion into the contemporary agenda of planetary urbanization and present its original formulation in and from Brazil, developed by Roberto Monte-Mór in the 1980s. In order to foster a productive dialogue between these formulations, we discuss the contradictions embedded within the process of extended urbanization and highlight Monte-Mór’s main theoretical and empirical contributions – particularly regarding urban politics and extended citizenship in the Brazilian Amazon. We contend that extended urbanization as formulated in and from Brazil offers important developments and goes far beyond a mere interesting empirical case in and from Brazil. Instead, it illuminates contemporary questions regarding planetary urbanization.

O autor analisa a relação entre a literatura que trata da configuração das instituições democráticas, em décadas recentes, e aqueles trabalhos que abordam as características da cultura política dos espaços urbanos. Argumenta sobre a necessidade de se viabilizar o diálogo entre as perspectivas teóricas culturalista e institucionalista, que, até agora, se desenvolvem de forma paralela e estanque.    

Despite boosting cities and preserving local culture in the face of changes imposed on urban markets in the global south, urban street fairs are territories that are still not well understood. Our objective is to evaluate urban street fairs as a locus of local territorial development from the perspective of the ecosocioeconomy. Methodologically, it is a survey with a sample of 334 on 485 street vendors in Curitiba, complemented by documentary surveys, interviews, and observations in-situ. As a result, urban street fairs are socio-productive arrangements emerging from the interaction among multiple rationalities; street vendors opt for their work due to tradition and preference for trade and not a market limitation; natural products (organic and traditional) are links between ecologically desirable commercial and productive practices. The perspective of ecosocioeconomy captures the material and symbolic constitution and development of urban street fairs as a complex relational territory embedded in the city, with its internalized and externalized interrelations in an urban governance system influenced by different rationalities and constituted by a multiplicity of actors in different spaces and times.

Rio de Janeiro continues to invest significantly in becoming a smart and innovative capital, with the 1746 platform as a cornerstone of this strategy. Aligned with the principle of High-Performance Management in urban governance, the 1746 platform facilitates service requests and complaints, enabling citizens to connect with the municipality through multiple communication channels. This system is intended to generate valuable insights for improving urban management. Contrary to positivist views of technology, this study highlights the emergence of new technopolitical dimensions of injustice linked to data flow management. Its key contribution lies in framing data-driven Citizen Relationship Management (CiRM) systems through the lens of data justice, addressing questions about how data is generated, analyzed, and processed, who benefits or is excluded, and how data relates to a broader social justice agenda. Methodologically, the research adopts a case study approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative methods such as data mining, geospatial analysis, interviews, and content analysis. The research findings reveal that the system has a limited capacity to democratize urban governance in Rio de Janeiro. While it facilitates the communication between citizens and the City Hall, it falls short in influencing long-term urban planning, fostering the inclusion of marginalized groups, and addressing underlying social structures.

Existing studies about the politics of southern cities, particularly Latin American cities, need to pay more attention to the political institutions behind urban governance. These institutions, additionally, were not created by design but are a product of intertwined historical processes. This article analyzes the main features and transformations of Latin American local governments, their politics, and governance, looked at from the angle of their historical formation. Mobilizing arguments from urban studies and political science usually developed apart, I start with the legacies of two intertwined historical processes—urbanization(s) and state formation(s)—to later observe their recent transformations since the recent return(s) to democracy. The reconstruction of these intertwined historical trajectories and of the effects of the present democratic period help to jointly explain the most important features of the politics of local governments in Latin America that influence their governance and actions—capacities, political grammars, actors, and coalitions—as well as their recent transformations.

This paper aims to make a modest contribution to the debate on how the ecologies of urbanization help us understand the socio-spatial changes we confront in the climate emergency. The intervention is constructed in four steps. First, it speaks to what kind of Urban Political Ecology (UPE)—or generally what I call a “spatialized political ecology”—may be appropriate for urban society. In a second step, it historicizes and spatializes the narrative by introducing an urban political ecology of landscapes. For that, the paper mobilizes the concepts of boundaries, belts, and in-betweens. The third part illustrates the transformation of postsuburban political ecologies in three rather different world regions. The last part of this paper examines what the potential is and what need for action exists in an urban society threatened and conditioned by the climate emergency and the Capitalocene. Ultimately, the paper aspires to move the debate on UPE more into the direction of making it relevant for the urban affairs of a suburban planet.

This article explores Rio’s housing policy transformation over the past 2 decades to reveal how it has contributed to rendering evictions and relocations possible and acceptable in the wake of mega-events. Theoretically, the article adopts actor-network theory (ANT) and the political sociology of public policy instruments (PPI) and delves into the unfolding of Rio’s slum upgrading instrumentation from 1993 to 2012. This article argues that the weakening of slum upgrading as a central policy instrument to address Rio’s housing problem together with the reemergence of housing construction as a suitable solution have contributed to the development evictions and relocations in the wake of mega-events. Therefore, the article highlights that evictions relate not only to capitalist accumulation and the neoliberal paradigm but also to other dynamics, contributing to a more nuanced account of Rio’s urban transformations in recent years.

Many authors agree that gentrification in Latin America depends on the intervention of the state. However, for the renovation of large urban areas that have long lacked public attention, state intervention is a pivotal driver. This comparative analysis involved fieldwork analysis and short ethnographies in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. Results show variations and some common threads, namely land valorization policies, schemes designed to promote the creation of economic opportunities for upper-income investors and developers, the establishment of creative or cultural industrial hubs, investment in new transport and cultural infrastructure, city rebranding, and the use of iconic architecture. Displacement policies have been implemented in Brazil, although with limited success. In Brazil and Mexico, attempts have been made to control social behaviors within particular spaces, often in a racialized manner. We arrive at a narrative that differs from that of the Global North, which considers state-led gentrification to constitute the privatization of social housing under the hegemonic imposition of discourses of “social mixing.” The concept of state and its trajectory differ considerably in each hemisphere.