Interdisciplinar

In this article, I examine the definition of resistance given by a favela woman from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—Lucia Cabral—and its epistemological potential for urban theory. From a feminist, postcolonial and decolonial point of view, I argue that Lucia's definition of resistance entails an insightful framework to understand urban transformations, because she shifts the question of ‘what they are’ to ‘where they stream from’. I build on my situated position and inter-relationality with Lucia to argue that, first, urban transformations, which I here refer to as forms of urbanization, can and often do come from the favela; secondly, that these forms of urbanization derive from situated and translocated-ing Amefrican epistemologies; and thirdly, that women's bodies constitute, in many cases, the very basis of urban futurities in the favelas. I look into embodied forms of urbanization to conclude that it is possible to see, feel, sense and nurture forms of future-thinking and -building that I here call Amefrican futurities, for they emerge from the specific subjectivities and praxis of women living in the favelas.

One of the largest urban centers in the world, the Brazilian city of São Paulo is characterized by high levels of socio-economic inequality and political polarization, significantly complicating issues of urban governance. Despite being designed to partially address these problems, São Paulo's participatory budget (PB) was bounded by its urban context, institutional design and the relative strength of the political actors involved. The article analyzes a mechanism created within the PB to incorporate historically disadvantaged groups, or ‘socially vulnerable segments’, during the Workers' Party administration of 2001–04. The segments methodology constitutes an intriguing example of how affirmative action can be used to improve decision-making processes and address social exclusion in urban contexts. In particular, the segments served as a ‘counterpublic’ within the PB, helping activists representing the segments to develop strategies influencing the city's urban and social policy.

The following article identifies two different urban policy regimes in Latin America —neoliberal and socialist — and traces their origins to the distinct interests and capacities of local elites and activists in the region’s cities in the mid-to-late twentieth century. While agricultural and commercial interests paid a high price for the growth ofimport-substituting industrialization, and therefore deployed free trade zones (andsimilar institutions) in traditional export centers in the 1960s and 1970s, their industrialrivals bore the brunt of austerity and adjustment in the free market era, and therefore adopted compensatory measures designed to increase the ‘social wage’ in the 1980s and1990s. Examples are drawn from municipalities in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela, and call the conventional portrait of impotent LatinAmerican cities — and omnipotent central governments — into question.

Since the 1980s, the metropolitan spaces of Brazil have seen a significant upsurge of the Christian Pentecostal movement, which today dominates the religious landscape of the favelas. In Rio de Janeiro, the rise of Pentecostalism coincided with the establishment of drug gangs as actors controlling favela territories. Based on an ethnographic field study conducted in a favela complex in the city's Zona Norte, this article examines the role and significance of the Pentecostal churches in Rio's favelas, both in everyday urban life and in the ways these areas are governed. One of my focal points of analysis is the increasing entanglement of actors in the drug industry and church actors. The article posits that the Pentecostal churches' role and significance, their institutional shape and their followers' practices are inextricably intertwined with the favela's social, spatial and political structural patterns. It shows the ways in which the evolving Pentecostal movement has permeated all aspects of the favela's informal way of urban life and government and has produced a new urban religious configuration in which the Pentecostal movement and the favela are intertwined and transform each other.

Around the end of 2019, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 were identified, and from then on, the world we were used to knowing changed globally. The role of population density, in relation to the spread of the pandemic, has been widely scrutinised in urban studies, believed to be the triggering variable. However, the results so far are inconclusive. This paper suggests instead to shift the focus to sociospatial vulnerabilities, as the effects of the pandemic’s spread have been more severe in urban units which feature long-standing inequalities. The paper’s aim is, therefore, twofold: on the one hand it aims at contributing to the debate on population density and COVID-19 in urban areas, and, on the other hand, to analyse the pandemic’s spread in relation to socio-spatial vulnerabilities. Different cities across the globe are drawn into a comparative project, where the pandemic’s spread is analysed in relation to variables of Population Density (PD) and a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), by employing correlation matrices. The results suggest that there is no significant correlation between density and the spread of COVID-19. Instead, a positive correlation is in place when analysing the pandemic’s diffusion with socio-spatial inequalities.

In recent decades, the world has witnessed a remarkable surge in urban expansion, leading to profound consequences for the global climate, biodiversity, and ecological environment. Despite the existence of numerous case studies, assessing the precise contributions of individual cities to this global trend has proven challenging, primarily due to the daunting task of collecting census data for thousands of cities. The study conducted a comprehensive analysis of the recent urban expansion in more than 6000 cities, utilizing state-of-the-art longterm datasets of urban impervious surface area (ISA), population, gross domestic product (GDP) data, and a global city boundary. By tracking the changes in ISA, population, and GDP, we assessed the magnitude and direction (increasing or decreasing) of these variables over time at both the global level and across different regions and countries. Through correlation analysis, we established statistical relationships between urban expansion and GDP growth as well as population change. Furthermore, we examined the profits of these cities and evaluated the projected flood risks they faced. Through the study, we conducted a comprehensive analysis and revealed detailed characteristics, patterns, and disparities in city development, economic output, population density, as well as the profits and projected flood risks across cities, countries, and regions. This in-depth understanding of recent urban expansion provides valuable insights for decision-makers and stakeholders to actively promote sustainable urban development and effectively manage associated risks in diverse geographical contexts.

COVID-19 initially spread among prominent global cities and soon to the urban centers of countries across the globe. While cities are the hotbeds of activities, they also seem highly exposed to global risks including the pandemic. Using the case of COVID-19 and the World Risk Index framework, this paper examines if the leading cities from the global south are inherently vulnerable and exposed to global risks and can they exacerbate the overall risk of their respective nations. Compared against their respective national averages, most of the 20 cities from 10 countries analyzed in this paper, have higher exposure, lower adaptive capacity, higher coping capacity and varied susceptibility. As this relative understanding is based on respective national averages which are often lower than the global standards, even high performance on certain indicators may still result in elevated predisposition. This paper concludes that the leading urban centers from the global south are highly likely to be predisposed to global risks due to their inherent vulnerability and exposure, and many of the drivers of this predisposition are related to the process of urbanization itself. This predisposition can enhance the overall exposure and vulnerability of the nation in which they are located.