Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on the editors
- Notes on the contributors
- Foreword
- One Introduction: ‘gentrification’ – a global urban process?
- Two Unravelling the yarn of gentrification trends in the contested inner city of Athens
- Three Slum gentrification in Lisbon, Portugal: displacement and the imagined futures of an informal settlement
- Four City upgraded: redesigning and disciplining downtown Abu Dhabi
- Five Confronting favela chic: the gentrification of informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Six Rethinking gentrification in India: displacement, dispossession and the spectre of development
- Seven The prospects of gentrification in downtown Cairo: artists, private investment and the neglectful state
- Eight Widespread and diverse forms of gentrification in Israel
- Nine The endogenous dynamics of urban renewal and gentrification in Seoul
- Ten Value extraction from land and real estate in Karachi
- Eleven Gentrification in Buenos Aires: global trends and local features
- Twelve Promoting private interest by public hands? The gentrification of 223 public lands by housing policies in Taipei City
- Thirteen The making of, and resistance to, state-led gentrification in Istanbul, Turkey
- Fourteen Gentrification, neoliberalism and loss in Puebla, Mexico
- Fifteen Capital, state and conflict: the various drivers of diverse gentrification processes in Beirut, Lebanon
- Sixteen Gentrification in Nigeria: the case of two housing estates in Lagos
- Seventeen Gentrification in China?
- Eighteen Emerging retail gentrification in Santiago de Chile: the case of Italia-Caupolicán
- Nineteen Gentrification dispositifs in the historic centre of Madrid: a reconsideration of urban governmentality and state-led urban reconfiguration
- Twenty When authoritarianism embraces gentrification – the case of Old Damascus, Syria
- Twenty-one The place of gentrification in Cape Town
- Twenty-two Conclusion: global gentrifications
- Afterword The adventure of generic gentrification
- Index
Five - Confronting favela chic: the gentrification of informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on the editors
- Notes on the contributors
- Foreword
- One Introduction: ‘gentrification’ – a global urban process?
- Two Unravelling the yarn of gentrification trends in the contested inner city of Athens
- Three Slum gentrification in Lisbon, Portugal: displacement and the imagined futures of an informal settlement
- Four City upgraded: redesigning and disciplining downtown Abu Dhabi
- Five Confronting favela chic: the gentrification of informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Six Rethinking gentrification in India: displacement, dispossession and the spectre of development
- Seven The prospects of gentrification in downtown Cairo: artists, private investment and the neglectful state
- Eight Widespread and diverse forms of gentrification in Israel
- Nine The endogenous dynamics of urban renewal and gentrification in Seoul
- Ten Value extraction from land and real estate in Karachi
- Eleven Gentrification in Buenos Aires: global trends and local features
- Twelve Promoting private interest by public hands? The gentrification of 223 public lands by housing policies in Taipei City
- Thirteen The making of, and resistance to, state-led gentrification in Istanbul, Turkey
- Fourteen Gentrification, neoliberalism and loss in Puebla, Mexico
- Fifteen Capital, state and conflict: the various drivers of diverse gentrification processes in Beirut, Lebanon
- Sixteen Gentrification in Nigeria: the case of two housing estates in Lagos
- Seventeen Gentrification in China?
- Eighteen Emerging retail gentrification in Santiago de Chile: the case of Italia-Caupolicán
- Nineteen Gentrification dispositifs in the historic centre of Madrid: a reconsideration of urban governmentality and state-led urban reconfiguration
- Twenty When authoritarianism embraces gentrification – the case of Old Damascus, Syria
- Twenty-one The place of gentrification in Cape Town
- Twenty-two Conclusion: global gentrifications
- Afterword The adventure of generic gentrification
- Index
Summary
Introduction
On the iconic promenade of Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is an outdoor market selling clothing, artwork and various tchotchkes to tourists. Embodied in these wares is Rio's cultivated visual vocabulary in miniature: Christ the Redeemer shelf ornaments, Sugarloaf Mountain key chains, artwork inspired by the city's natural splendour, and other commodifications of the images that have long attracted Brazilians and foreign tourists to this city. However, contemporarily, a new image has joined the jumble: paintings of the haphazard favelas on Rio's hillsides are on offer next to those depicting the city's natural splendour and cultural iconography. The Brazilian favela – historically stigmatised as an urban slum and a national embarrassment of poverty and marginalisation incarnate – has begun to be admitted, at least on canvas, to the city's esteemed milieu.
Favelas themselves have come a long way over their 100 years of existence as an informal style of habitation. At one time, these scattered settlements comprised wood or wattle-and-daub shacks, housing economic migrants from other regions of Brazil. Now, no longer properly termed a ‘squatter settlement’ or a ‘slum’, favelas have evolved, through the organic process of accretion and collective community building, into consolidated urban villages built of masonry and reinforced concrete. Levels of income, investment and condition vary widely, but households with sufficient means have improved their homes with modern interiors and furnishings. Utilities and other services can be procured informally and recently, in some cases, through formalised relationships with suppliers. Tenurial security is codified in a patchwork of legislation and constitutional guarantees, and informal property markets are robust.
Social attitudes towards favelas in the Brazilian mainstream are also becoming less crudely formed. Political majorities in this class-stratified society are warming to the idea of the social inclusion of the marginalised and the dispossessed, and a set of ongoing policy initiatives at the municipal, state and federal levels, promoted under the theme of ‘social integration’, aim to introduce new regimes of security, connective infrastructure and/or urban services to some of these informal neighbourhoods. Piloted in the 1990s and intensified in anticipation of Brazil's hosting of two mega-events – the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in 2014 and the Summer Olympic Games in 2016 – these programmes reassert state sovereignty over what was once generally assumed to be provisional but ultimately irredeemable typologies of habitation.
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- Global GentrificationsUneven Development and Displacement, pp. 81 - 100Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2015
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