Favelas and Gentrification: Reflections on the Impacts of Urban Restructuring on the City of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article focuses on the urban, social, and symbolic transformations in Rio favelas, which became visible at the end of the first 2000s decade, linked mainly to public security, urbanization policies, and the arrival of the formal market in the favelas. These transformations began to be analyzed not only by the academic literature—but also by the media and local leadership—from the perspective of gentrification. In the city of Rio, research show that the adoption of the neoliberal pattern of urbanization in the early 2000s led to the elitization of popular territories. Thus, the concept of gentrification began to be applied in several studies on urban renewal in old port neighborhoods, industrial districts, and even in favelas, especially those located around the South Zone, where the elite is concentrated. However, from the years of 2015, attempts to resume drug trafficking in these territories and the economic crisis of Rio State have been undermining the public security program in favelas, placing barriers to the neoliberal urbanization of the city and consequently to gentrification experiments there.