Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior

Mudanças e permanências na cultura política das metrópoles brasileiras

This article discusses the formulations of the theoretical school known as the New Political Culture (NPC), seeking to evaluate the limits and possibilities of this approach for interpreting contemporary Brazilian culture. Based on research by the Network of Metropolitan Observatories in partnership with other Brazilian and international institutions, the authors argue that this approach is limited in its ability to analyze current changes in Brazil, where the values and behaviors related to NPC, although gaining strength in recent decades, are far from constituting the main existing cultural grammar.

Democracia e segregação urbana: reflexões sobre a relação entre cidade e cidadania na sociedade brasileira

Traditionally, cities have been thought like places of modernity and democracy; nevertheless, contemporary debate about urban impacts of economic transformations is marked by the hypothesis of the emergency of a new socio-spatial order, in the which cities fulfill an exactly inverse paper, with the sprouting of a dualized social structure and a fragmented spatial organization. In this article we examine some aspects of this hypothesis, according to our findings of changes and continuities of socio-spatial and institucional nature in Brazilian metropolis. Using a theoretical frame that articulates democracy with its social conditions and institutions, we finally discuss the effects that socio-spatial transformations in Brazilian cities may have over the effectiveness of citizenship rights and democratic dynamics

Challenges of Urban Reform, Urban Political Monitoring and Urban Management

In 1995, the project Observatorio was launched by the Institute of Research in Urban and Regional Planning of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPPUR) in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Social and Educational Servicing (FASE). This project intends to provide municipal administrations in the state of Rio de Janeiro with an understanding of new urban policy models and new urban management. Its central objectives are research, education, training, and mediation/communication in the realm of urban policy. Observatorio emerged from the National Movement of Urban Reform and its overall aim is reduction in social inequities, the improvement of quality of life for all citizens, the mobilization of social capital, and the evolution of democratization, citizenship, and participatory processes in civil society.In 1995, the project Observatório was launched by the Institute of Research in Urban and Regional Planning of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPPUR) in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Social and Educational Servicing (FASE). This project intends to provide municipal administrations in the state of Rio de Janeiro with an understanding of new urban policy models and new urban management. Its central objectives are research, education, training, and mediation/communication in the realm of urban policy. Observatório emerged from the National Movement of Urban Reform and its overall aim is reduction in social inequities, the improvement of quality of life for all citizens, the mobilization of social capital, and the evolution of democratization, citizenship, and participatory processes in civil society.

Entrepreneurial Governance: Neoliberal Modernization

In this article, it is argued that several changes are underway in the city of Rio de Janeiro related to what has been called neoliberal entrepreneurial governance, involving a process of creative destruction of urban structures, institutional arrangements for the management, and regulation of urban space. In particular, one must consider the context of the city’s preparation to receive two sports mega-events, the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Supported by a coalition of economic, political, and social interests, this project seems to hit specifically the urban configuration of certain areas, notably Barra da Tijuca, the Port Area and the South Zone, pointing toward the deepening of socio-spatial inequalities in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In this sense, one can say that the current changes go toward something that might be called neoliberal modernization.

Neoliberalization and mega-events: The transition of Rio de Janeiro’s hybrid urban order

ABSTRACT The current developments in Rio de Janeiro in the wake of the 2014 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games have accelerated the transition from a hybrid urban order to a new urban order of intensified neoliberalization and commodification. This transition is a complex and contradictory process that entails both rollback and rollout features of neoliberalism, as well as a permanent restructuring of sociospatial relations and political arrangements. By discussing the ongoing policies and politics of urban restructuring, we examine the creative destruction of urban structures, institutional arrangements, and regulations of urban space with the transformation of 3 sites in Rio de Janeiro—Barra da Tijuca, the port district, and the South Zone. The process of variegated neoliberalization generates new modes of production and reproduction, which threaten the principles of democratic governance and universalization of rights to the city.