{"id":1936,"date":"2011-10-04T08:00:38","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=1936"},"modified":"2015-12-14T10:21:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T13:21:08","slug":"the-city-of-mega-events-visibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=1936","title":{"rendered":"The City of Mega Events: Visibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original article published\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0by In\u00eas Nin of OverMundo<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This city does not belong to you anymore. The Mayor has changed the rules, your neighbourhood is now far away, and there\u00a0is a multi-million real development plan in place, which is starting to show its claws\u00a0and wreak havoc<\/a>. The logic that prevails is that of substitution–the problem replaced by make-up, sustained by the propaganda of prosperity.<\/p>\n

The climate of euphoria brought about by the coming of two \u201cmega events\u201d to the\u00a0city of Rio de Janeiro–the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016–has led to vast real estate speculation in the city, expelling residents to increasingly distant neighbourhoods. In a city already known for its alarming social disparities, whose best known tourist points are located between the South Zone and the City Centre, the same part of the city where many-decades-old communities are based, an urban revitalization program should have prioritized infrastructure for the people who already live there. This would be\u00a0the least expected. The public-private partnerships firmed up for this revitalization program, however, the largest of which is the “Porto Maravilha<\/a>” (Marvellous Port) program, have the explicit objective of increasing tourist attractions in a city which already accumulates Brazilian clich\u00e9 attractions; treating local residents instead like mere obstacles in the way of the enterprise.\u00a0To take a guess at the beneficiaries<\/a>, you just have to think of the best known names, who gain access to these projects including easy access to land and facilities<\/a>\u00a0from the government.<\/p>\n

Evictions<\/a>, displacements, houses where residents awaken to eviction markings scrawled on their walls, similar to Nazi practices–but this time by the Municipal Housing Secretary! These are the most alarming and noticeable collateral effects foreseen by\u00a0these reforms. Other cities around the world have gone through similar processes of\u00a0reconstruction and permanent work to accommodate the Olympics, generating an\u00a0impact on the people of the city. But what they always forget to keep in mind when\u00a0they export the beautiful and attractive models to the outside world is local context. What are the positive aspects this work is going to bring to the people of the port region, who for decades have been abandoned, waiting for\u00a0help from the State? And when it finally arrives, is it to benefit new arrivals (rather than existing residents) to the area, who are obviously better-off financially and more\u00a0often than not just visitors, getting rid of the long-time residents.<\/p>\n

You are mistaken if you believe that the evictions that are taking place throughout\u00a0the city are happening in the so-called \u201cat risk areas\u201d–or is it that a house set firmly on the top of the Provid\u00eancia Favela for approximately 100\u00a0years was in a situation of risk and they have only just realised this now? Would\u00a0it not be more coherent to acknowledge that the threat of removal is\u00a0directed at unwanted communities, for being in the way of the mapped out route\u00a0of the revitalization project, without any participation from the local people? Factors\u00a0indicate that even those who weren\u2019t moved by such\u00a0explicit processes as these ones, will in the future nonetheless, because the real estate\u00a0interest generated by the euphoria of the transformation of the city brings with it new value to the land.<\/p>\n

As I walked along the Rodrigues Alves Avenue (in the heart of the Port region) last Sunday, leaving Pra\u00e7a Mau\u00e1<\/a> towards the central bus station, the scene was allegorical of such discrepancies:\u00a0on one side, two warehouses of the port pier housed \u201cArt Rio\u201d–the first edition of the\u00a0international art market in Rio de Janeiro, with packed stalls, a mix of tourists\u00a0and potential buyers, some sitting on comfortable sofas sipping champagne. Of course this is not the first time an event like this has taken place in the area.\u00a0But at a time when the occupation of the old chocolate factory, Bhering, by artists\u00a0who use the space as their studio, is used in the campaign for Porto Maravilha<\/a> as\u00a0a pioneering aspect of the revitalization of the area, the presence of the market is\u00a0symbolic, perhaps highlighting a position that maybe not all of the artists present\u00a0there would like to occupy.<\/p>\n

The view from Rodrigues Alves Avenue is cut by the Perimetral overpass, which will be buried and become an underground road–this\u00a0reform is still anchored for the moment in the bus transport system, curse of our\u00a0modernity. On the other side of the Avenue, we visit the occupation \u201cFlor do Asfalto.” Different from Bhering, they announce themselves a “squat<\/a>,” linking themselves to the global movement of occupying abandoned buildings, and they\u00a0are a culturally and politically active group. The land, formerly of the Union, has been transferred for the revitalization works of the region. \u00a0The affected do the moving, that is the State’s position. \u00a0There’s no debate on that.<\/p>\n

I am writing this article, spurred on by the initial studies carried out by people who\u00a0have been trying to make these facts known to the population. The changes that\u00a0are happening in the city affect the majority of people who live there, they are not\u00a0isolated or distant facts but relevant. Even if they were, processes like these have\u00a0profound effects and demand the participation of those who are involved: they\u00a0demand a dialogue and not only celebrations and publicity campaigns. People who are simply looking to rent or buy an apartment It is can easily see what is going on, as can\u00a0those who are capable of observing the ludicrous amount of work and\u00a0construction occurring in their surroundings.<\/p>\n

The Laboratory of Insurgent Cartography<\/a> put together by the Public Interface\u00a0Collective, together with many other collectives, find themselves at a time of \u201cpre-lab.\u201d The idea is to discuss with the local community and anybody else interested,\u00a0and expose the problems of these changes, to discuss together alternative tactics,\u00a0ways of doing things and their meaning by way of diverse workshops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original article published\u00a0here\u00a0by In\u00eas Nin of OverMundo: This city does not belong to you anymore. The Mayor has changed the rules, your neighbourhood is now far away, and there\u00a0is a multi-million real development plan in […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1293,1736,1330],"tags":[255,254,1259,5,148,146,1899,167],"writer":[257],"translator":[217],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-1736","9":"category-translation","10":"tag-activism","11":"tag-mapping","12":"tag-mega-events","13":"tag-olympics","14":"tag-port-region","15":"tag-porto-maravilha","16":"tag-praca-maua","17":"tag-world-cup","18":"writer-ines-nin","19":"translator-katy-bailes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=1936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}