Abstract

This article uses an urban upgrading programme (PAC Favela) as a lens for examining the contextual dynamics and forms of neoliberal urban development in pre-Olympic Rio de Janeiro. Critical scholarship has contended that Rio’s entrepreneurial governance and mega-event induced state of exception pushed forward a neoliberal urban agenda. While not rejecting this overarching narrative, the present article argues that this tendency was shaped by contextual politics at different scales, producing variegated forms of urban development. At the federal level, urban policy and practice under lulismo – the political ideology characterizing the 2002–2016 Workers’ Party governments – was marked by an ambition to achieve both social and economic transformation. The PAC Growth Acceleration Programme’s investments in favela upgrading were emblematic of this ambition. Through a multi-scalar case study of the social and economic interests and actors at the community, state and federal levels that engaged with PAC in the Rocinha favela in Rio, the article shows that PAC’s interventions were the outcome of contentions and confluences between citizen- and market-centred urban agendas. While the balance gradually shifted in favour of the market-centred, neoliberal agenda, outcomes should still be seen as inherently hybrid. On the one hand, the case of PAC in Rocinha presents a perspective ‘from below’ and important insights into the contested and contradictory nature of urban transformation in pre-Olympic Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, it illustrates the necessity for contextual analyses of perceived de-politicized neoliberal entrepreneurial urban governance and development.

摘要

本文使用城市升级计划（PAC Favela）作为镜头，考察了里约热内卢奥运会前的环境动态和新自由主义城市发展形式。批判性的学者争辩说，里约的企业家统治和大事件引发的例外状态推动了新自由主义的城市议程。尽管不反对这种笼统的叙述，但本文认为，这种趋势是由不同规模的情境政治所塑造的，产生了多种形式的城市发展。在联邦一级，卢里斯莫领导下的城市政策和实践2002-2016年工人党政府的政治思想特征是实现社会和经济转型的雄心壮志。PAC增长加速计划在贫民窟改造方面的投资标志着这一雄心壮志。通过对与里约Rocinha favela的PAC互动的社区，州和联邦层面的社会，经济利益和行为者进行多尺度的案例研究，文章显示PAC的干预是公民之间争执与融合的结果。和以市场为中心的城市议程。尽管平衡逐渐转向以市场为中心的新自由主义议程，但结果仍应被视为具有内在的混合性。一方面，罗辛哈（Rocinha）的PAC案例提供了“从下面”的观点，以及对奥林匹克前里约热内卢城市转型充满争议和矛盾性质的重要见解。此外，它说明了对感知到的去政治化的新自由主义企业家城市治理和发展进行背景分析的必要性。