Bianca Freire-Medeiros

Flying for the Very First Time: Mobilities, Social Class and Environmental Concerns in a Rio de Janeiro Favela

Abstract This article aims to be a contribution towards an understanding of the interplays between subjective, situated and normative justifications for traveling and the imaginary of class and global warming in Brazil. Taking as its empirical reference the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro, it focuses on how people who are having the opportunity to travel by plane for the first time accommodate three interrelated issues: their willingness to experience an energy intensive way of travelling, their affective and material realities, and their awareness about the changing of the world’s climate. The article concludes with some reflections on how to reintegrate global knowing with local meaning around travel and climate change.

Does the future of the favela fit in an aerial cable car? Examining tourism mobilities and urban inequalities through a decolonial lens

ABSTRACT Promising to foster social, economic, and spatial integration, as well as tourism opportunities, the application of gondola lift systems to segregated urban areas has attracted widespread attention. In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the aerial cable car system is a key component of place-branding strategies that are preparing the city for global mega events. Under a decolonial lens and the inspiration of the New Mobilities Paradigm, the idealization, the uses, and disputes around this transportation device, celebrated as capable of adding touristic value to despoiled landscapes, allow for a more comprehensive understanding of heated conflicts over mobility patterns, especially concerning favelas as touristic destinations, that are contemporary but are also extensions of older inequalities played out in Brazil. The conclusion highlights the need to infer about the future of the megacities in which tourism flows are increasingly legitimating high-cost infrastructural proposals which neglect genuinely participatory and inclusive public consultation methods.