Reinforcing uneven development: The financialisation of Brazilian urban redevelopment projects

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (10) ◽  
pp. 2160-2178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayra Mosciaro ◽  
Alvaro Pereira

The entrepreneurial city discourse has been adopted around the globe by policymakers, with the urban redevelopment project as one of its most representative symbols. The predominantly favourable discourse revolving around this new political economy of urban space is supported by claims that newly regenerated areas bring multiple benefits to the city and its citizens. These narratives have been used in Brazil to justify increasing reliance on an urban planning tool known as Urban Operations. This planning tool, developed in the 1990s, seeks to facilitate cooperation between public and private actors in the production of new urban spaces. While projected by some as a ‘magic formula’ that enables major urban redevelopment projects without public expenditure, the outcomes of Urban Operations often differ significantly from expectations. The cases of Água Espraiada (São Paulo) and Porto Maravilha (Rio de Janeiro) are used to demonstrate that regenerated areas, as preferred spaces for the penetration of financialised practices into the built environment, have brought forward new dynamics that are serving to reinforce pre-existing social inequalities and to exacerbate uneven development in Brazil’s main cities.

Author(s):  
Юлия Робертовна Горелова ◽  
Александра Мартановна Маматулина

Данная статья посвящена исследованию отражения образных характеристик архитектурной среды города в пейзажах художников. Анализируя индивидуальные образные интерпретации разных художников, авторы предпринимают попытку обозначить общие тенденции в отображении архитектурной составляющей городского текста в целом и в частности его отдельных элементов (архитектурных объектов и пространств) в изобразительном искусстве. При этом авторами актуализируется внимание на специфике отображения различных типов городских пространств как публичных, так и камерных. При анализе публичных пространств центральной части города, формирующих «парадный портрет города», основное внимание уделяется отражению образов так называемых «визитных карточек»: наиболее значимых в семиотическом отношении архитектурных объектов и пространств, формирующих позитивный и презентабельный образ города. Некоторые фрагменты городского пространства выступают излюбленными мотивами городских пейзажей, написанных омскими художниками. Именно эти пространства воспринимаются жителями в качестве визитных карточек города и представляют собой наиболее значимые в семиотическом отношении фрагменты городского текста. В Омске, несомненно, к таким ключевым пространствам и объектам следует отнести архитектурные ансамбли ул. Ленина (Любинский проспект) и ул. Тарской, ансамбли Соборной и Никольской площадей, здания Драматического театра, Серафимо-Алексеевской часовни и Речного вокзала и др. Можно констатировать наличие излюбленных ракурсов при изображении архитектурных пространств центральной части Омска. Одним из таких является вид из окон Дома художников на реку Омь, мост и перспективу Любинского проспекта на противоположном берегу реки. Изображение Любинского у разных художников отличается не только выбором ракурса, а более настроением и своим отношением к данному пространству. Некоторые художники в своих работах выходят на глубокий уровень философского осмысления пространства, другие – показывают его будничным и обыденным. Камерные пейзажи, как правило, изображают фрагменты городской среды, относительно изолированные от центральных городских публичных пространств. К таким можно отнести дворы, арки и др. Камерным пространствам характерна близость, интимность. Большинство камерных пространств являются анонимными. Самым ярким примером камерного городского пространства являются дворы. Мотив строчной рядовой многоэтажной застройки, характерный для большинства городских окраин, также находит отражение в работах омских художников. У некоторых художников образ окраины передается как пустынное пространство, где высотная застройка перемежается с пустынными пространствами. Другой вариант осмысления данного образа предполагает трактовку окраины как пространства привычного, обжитого, наполненного утилитарными функциями и обустроенного людьми под свои нужды. This article aims to examine the reflection of figurative characteristics of the city’s architectural environment in artists’ landscapes. By analyzing individual figurative interpretations by different artists, the authors attempt to determine global tendencies in the reflection of the city’s architectural environment in general, and in its individual elements (architectural objects and spaces) in visual arts in particular. The authors focus attention on the specifics of the presentation of different types of urban spaces, both public and private. Analyzing public spaces of the city center, which form the “grand portrait of the city”, the authors concentrate on the reflection of the city’s landmarks—the most significant semiotic architectural objects and spaces that form a positive and presentable image of the city. Some parts of the urban space are favorite topics of urban landscapes by Omsk artists. It is these spaces that residents perceive as landmarks; they represent the most valuable, in semiotic terms, parts of the urban text. In Omsk, undoubtedly, the landmarks of the city are architectural ensembles in Lenin St. (Lyubinsky Prospect) and Tarskaya St.; ensembles of the Sobornaya and Nikolskaya Squares; the buildings of the Drama Theater, of the Seraphim-Alekseevskaya Chapel and of the River Boat Station, etc. Artists have favorite perspectives in depicting the architectural spaces of the central part of Omsk. One of them is a view from the windows of the House of Artist on the Om’ River, the bridge, and the perspective of Lubinskiy Prospect, which is on the other bank of the river. Artists show Lubinskiy Prospect in different ways: due to not only the chosen angle, but also their mood and attitude to the space they depict. Some artists go to the deep level of a philosophical understanding of the surrounding space, while others illustrate it as ordinary. Private landscapes, as usual, show parts of urban environment that are relatively isolated from public central urban spaces. Yards and arches are examples of it. Private spaces usually have a close, intimate atmosphere. Most private spaces are anonymous. The most vivid examples of the private urban space are yards. Omsk artists also reflect the motif of multistorey buildings, mainly concentrated in the outskirts, in their works. Some artists depict the outskirts as an empty space, while others interpret them as a habitual, familiar space full of utilitarian functions and arranged by people to meet their needs.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Caragh Wells

This article suggests that over recent decades Catalan literary criticism has paid too little attention to the aesthetic attributes of Catalan literature and emphasised the social, political and cultural at the expense of discussions of narrative poetics. Through an analysis of Montserrat Roig’s metaphorical use of the city in her first novel Ramona, adéu, I put forward the view that the aesthetic features of Catalan literature need to be re-claimed. This article provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic importance of Roig’s representation of the city in her first novel and argues that she uses Barcelona as a critical tool through which to explore questions of both female emancipation and aesthetic freedom. Following a detailed discussion of Roig’s descriptions of how her female characters interact with particular urban spaces, I examine how Roig makes subtle shifts in her semantic register during these narrative accounts when her prose moves into the realm of the poetic. I conclude that this technique enables us to read her accounts of urban space as metaphors for aesthetic freedom and are inextricably linked to her wider concerns on the importance of liberating Catalan literature from the discourse of political nationalism.


ILUMINURAS ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (36) ◽  
Author(s):  
Urpi Montoya Uriarte

Este trabalho se insere no que se chama hoje de antropologia da cidade, que se preocupa com a forma como os citadinos – em sua condição alternada de usuários, moradores, transeuntes ou consumidores – fazem a cidade (Agier, 2011). Nossa compreensão de cidade está marcada pela recente teoria do espaço no interior da Geografia (Massey, 2012) e nossa compreensão da produção do espaço se baseia na teoria de Henri Lefebvre, especialmente em seu La production de l´espace (1974). Com esta bagagem teórica, propomos uma antropologia dos espaços urbanos preocupada com a forma como os espaços na cidade são produzidos por pessoas comuns ou homens ordinários. Os dados empíricos analisados provêm de uma etnografia de dois micro-espaços na cidade de Salvador. As leituras teóricas destes micro-espaços nos levam a afirmar a atualidade e força dos espaços diferenciais que emergem no espaço abstrato, a significação política dos espaços apropriados e a vigência do valor de uso e as relações costumeiras na cidade contemporânea.Palavras-chave: Espaços urbanos. Produção do espaço. Espaços diferenciais. Apropriação de espaços. Valor de uso.Production of urban space by ordinary men: anthropology of two micro-spaces in the city of SalvadorAbstractThis work is part of what is today called anthropology of the city, that is concerned with how the townspeople – in their alternating condition of users, residents, bystanders or consumers – make the city (Agier, 2011). Our understanding of the city is marked by the recent theory of space inside the geography (Massey, 2012) and our understanding of the production of space is based on the theory of Henri Lefebvre, especially in its The production of the space (1974). With this theoretical background, we propose an anthropology of urban spaces concerned with how the spaces in the city are made by ordinary people or ordinary men . The data analyzed come from an ethnographic study of two micro-spaces in the city of Salvador. The theoretical interpretations of these micro-spaces lead us to affirm the relevance and strength of differential spaces that emerge in the abstract space, the political significance of the appropriate spaces and the duration of use value and customary relations in the contemporary city.Keywords: Urban spaces. Production of space. Differential spaces. Appropriation of spaces. Use value.  


Dimensions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Sergiy Ilchenko

Abstract This contribution elaborates upon the appropriation of urban space in spatiotemporal and procedural interventions in the example of the city of Kharkiv, as well as the impact of urban space on the process of how various groups rediscover and use various parts of the city. Being moved during collective actions - in the sense of feeling urged to move along - goes beyond routine practices by influencing the city and its perception. It seems that these general processions, celebrations, and festive activities of the residents are their contributions to the process of »urban renaissance« - the rebirth of interest in the urban way of life. Since public spaces reflect the historical inheritance of local communities, joint transformative actions such as, »appropriation «, »production«, and »governance« of urban spaces are considered. This article advocates for the practice of domestication of urban space by the local community, as well as the need for the existence of »urban lagoons« - free (unregulated) areas of the city used as resources for urban development and interaction of citizens.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-482
Author(s):  
Parvin Partovi ◽  
Kebria Sedaghat Rostami ◽  
Amir Shakibamanesh

In the crowded cities of the present age, public spaces can provide a quiet area away from the hustle and bustle of the city that citizens can interact with by incorporating utility features and meeting human needs and Relax there. Small urban spaces are among the most important and effective urban spaces to achieve this goal. Because these spaces due to their small size and lower costs (compared to larger spaces) for construction can be created in large numbers and distributed throughout the city. In this way, citizens will be able to reach a public urban space on foot in a short time. If these spaces are well designed, they can encourage people to stay in and interact with each other. It is not difficult to identify and experience high-quality successful places, but identifying the reasons for their success is difficult and even more difficult, understanding if similar spaces in other places can be considered successful. This question is important because public space with deep social content is considered a cultural product. Public space is the product of the historical and socio-cultural forces of society. Therefore, one of the most important issues that should be considered in the study of public spaces and the reasons for their success is the cultural context. In Iranian cities that have been influenced by the values and principles of Islam,recognizing Islamic principles and their role in shaping public spaces can lead us to desirable results. The purpose of this article is to develop a conceptual model of successful small urban spaces with an emphasis on cultural issues, especially in Iranian-Islamic cities. In this regard, the effective criteria for the success of urban spaces in general and small urban spaces in particular in the two categories of Western countries and Iranian Islamic cities were examined and then, taking into account the criteria derived from cultural theorists, the conceptual model of research with 38 subcriteria is provided.


Author(s):  
Jacob Kreutzfeldt

Street cries, though rarely heard in Northern European cities today, testify to ways in which audible practices shape and structure urban spaces. Paradigmatic for what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call ‘the refrain’, the ritualised and stylised practice of street cries may point at the dynamics of space-making, through which the social and territorial construction of urban space is performed. The article draws on historical material, documenting and describing street cries, particularly in Copenhagen in the years 1929 to 1935. Most notably, the composer Vang Holmboe and the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen have investigated Danish street cries as a musical and a spatial phenomenon, respectably. Such studies – from their individual perspectives – can be said to explore the aesthetics of urban environments, since street calls are developed and heard specifically in the context of the city. Investigating the different methods employed in the two studies and presenting Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the refrain as a framework for further studies in the field, this article seeks to outline a fertile area of study for sound studies: the investigation of everyday refrains and the environmental relations they express and perform. Today changed sensibilities and technologies have rendered street crying obsolete in Northern Europe, but new urban ritornells may have taken their place.


Author(s):  
M.S. Parvathi ◽  

Burton Pike (1981) terms the cityscapes represented in literature as word-cities whose depiction captures the spatial significance evoked by the city-image and simultaneously, articulates the social psychology of its inhabitants (pp. 243). This intertwining of the social and the spatial animates the concept of spatiality, which informs the positionality of urban subjects, (be it the verticality of the city or the horizonality of the landscape) and determines their standpoint (Keith and Pile, 1993). The spatial politics underlying cityscapes, thus, determine the modes of social production of sexed corporeality. In turn, the body as a cultural product modifies and reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing demographic needs. The dialectic relationship between the city and the bodies embedded in them orient familial, social, and sexual relations and inform the discursive practices underlying the division of urban spaces into public and private domains. The geographical and social positioning of the bodies within the paradigm of the public/private binary regulates the process of individuation of the bodies into subjects. The distinction between the public and the private is deeply rooted in spatial practices that isolate a private sphere of domestic, embodied activity from the putatively disembodied political, public sphere. Historically, women have been treated as private and embodied and the politics of the demarcated spaces are employed to control and limit women’s mobility. This gendered politics underlying the situating practices apropos public and private spaces inform the representations of space in literary texts. Manu Joseph’s novels, Serious Men (2010) and The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012), are situated in the word-cities of Mumbai and Chennai respectively whose urban spaces are structured by such spatial practices underlying the politics of location. The paper attempts to problematize the nature of gendered spatializations informing the location of characters in Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People.


2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-79
Author(s):  
Dmitry N. Zamyatin ◽  
◽  

Literary texts can be considered as the most attractive research material for analyzing the key features of both the semiotics of the city as a whole and the semiotics of individual cities, to which many works of art are devoted. The urban space of Modernity as a result of the processes of powerful semiotization can be considered as both textual and intertextual. The intertextuality of Modern urban spaces presupposes sets of “floating” topological signifiers corresponding to similar sets of “floating” topological signs. In the traditional semiotics of the city, the existence of two realities is assumed — the “real” reality and the “semiotic” reality, between which clear logical correspondences and/or relations can be observed and analyzed. The appearance of non-classical/post-classical urban narratives focused on the problems of dis-communication at the beginning of the 20th century became one of the important signs of the primary formation of the post-city and post-urbanism phenomena. The post-city is not a text and can not be regarded as a text; at the same time, it can generate separate texts that are not related to each other in any way. Post-urban texts, which are the communicative results of specific co-spatialities, remain local “flashes” that do not form a single text or meta-text (super-text). Hetero-textuality is a phenomenon of post-urban reality, which is characterized by the coexistence, as a rule, of texts that do not correlate with each other, relating to certain stable urban loci. Trans-semiotics in general context is understood as the study of any texts that involve the creation of sign-symbolic breaks or “gaps” with any other potentially possible correlating texts in the process of signification. Trans-semiotics of post-cities are studies of (literary) texts that involve the creation of sign-symbolic breaks or “gaps” with any other potentially possible correlating texts related to a particular urban locus in the process of signifying any urban loci. The post-city heterostructuality can be considered as the co-spatiality of mutually exclusive texts corresponding to “non-seeing” post-city loci. Post-urban trans-semiotics in the course of their development form a kind of “dark zones” that reject or neutralize any attempt at any semiotic interpretation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 819-834
Author(s):  
Yewon Andrea Lee

Critical scholarship on gentrification has contributed significantly to bolstering the rights of working-class residents against the forces that price them out of the city. However, working-class residents are not the only ones who suffer from dispossession and displacement with rampant hyper-commodification of urban space. Based on the case of Seoul, I examine how new agents—tenant shopkeepers—emerged at the forefront of challenging gentrification and successfully reframed the problem of gentrification. Within the new frame, the shopkeepers who make their livelihoods by using urban spaces are pitted against the property owners who attempt to profit at the expense of their tenants. Through this case, I ask ‘How can radical shifts occur in the ways that the problem of gentrification is constructed?’ My answer draws upon the framing theory in the social movement literature which identifies conditions under which a radical departure from institutionalized ways and social norms can transpire even when the radical shift means challenging the entrenched power structure—in my case, the property-ownership-based rights regime. I highlight the importance of further developing a gentrification scholarship on social change that unravels the rise of new locations of resistance, particularly at a time when the advance of gentrification seems inevitable.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 639-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Calavita ◽  
Francesco Calabrò ◽  
Lucia Della Spina

In Italy, southern cities are often characterized by widespread phenomena of illegal settlements, that have resulted among other things in a worsening of the quality of life of the urban-rural interface, and the decline of the considerable architectural interest of the entire city. .The goal of this paper is to propose an approach that would help requalify what is already built, to make the best of what has been realized by focusing on the quality and liveability of the city. This approach is based on a particular methodology based on the promotion of Urban Complex Programs (PUC), which provide a system of development rights resulting from the demolition of unfinished illegal settlements . The benefits of this approach are many, including improvements in efficiencies and safety, meeting demands of environmental protection and reducing consumption of energy, responding to the highest standards of protection and seismic risk prevention. They can be obtained only on one condition: that they are based on a system of collective and public conveniences in accordance with the principle of sustainability in multiple dimensions (environmental, cultural, technological, political, institutional, social and economic). But for this approach to be viable it needs also to be convenient for the private actors as well. With this paper we hope to provide first an original approach that can improve the conditions of cities burdened with the problems of illegal settlements that is both sustainable and convenient and, second, an instrument that can provide information for both the public and private sectors on the fairness of the procedure and their mutual interest in pursuing this approach.


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