Another Olympic games are under way and again the citizens of the host city are asking themselves if this is at all worth it. My academic discipline – architecture and urban planning – has devoted dozens of books, conferences and meetings to discuss the issue. This time the games are in my native land of Brazil and therefore the conversation is very close to my heart. Perhaps because of that proximity I must entertain the idea that the legacy of Rio 2016 are three different kinds of demolitions.
Demolitions are rarely positive and Rio has had its fair share of traumatic ones. The most famous being the “bota-abaixo” of mayor Pereira Passos in 1905-1906. In the name of sanitation and improved circulation thousands of poor tenements were demolished (bota-abaixo means bring-it-down), new open land was made ready for private development and large avenues were built for this aggressive 20 century machine we call the automobile, allowing the wealthy cariocas to move south towards the ocean while the working class was pushed further north. A few decades later the demolition of the Castelo Hill continued with the tradition of removing poor families but at least it gave us some of the best architectural jewels of Rio: the Ministry of Education Building, the Santos Dumont airport and an amazing urban park at the Flamengo landfill (built with dirt from the demolished hill).
The building frenzy for the Olympic games were not at all different. The main Olympic park was built over the old car-racing tracks and did not escape the curse of becoming another chapter in the long history of displacing the most vulnerable. Vila Autódromo is (or was) an informal settlement occupying a tiny part of the site. The competition brief for the Olympic Park determined that Vila Autódromo should have the right to stay put, and the winning proposal contemplated that. Three years later, when the games opened last Friday, Vila Autódromo is no more. Because the developers didn’t want a favela anywhere near the apartments they’d need to sell after the Games, the city negotiated with individual occupants and demolished their houses as soon as they agreed to leave. Living in the middle of rubble and under the threat of forced relocation, the majority of the families accepted the city’s cash offer and left. The 25 families that resisted until the end will still have their homes demolished, but will be able to inhabit new ones built in their place. With no favela in the neighborhood the developers can now boost their sales.
Downtown, around the old port area, demolitions were much more widespread. Activists estimate that here 22,059 families were removed from their homes to give way for new apartments and office buildings. A recent article shows that the large majority of the land made available for development was already owned by the state, the favelas were eradicated mostly to make sure the value of the new real-estate would not be threatened by inconvenient neighbors.
But the port area also contains one of the few positive outcomes of Rio 2016 and it is another demolition. The Perimetral was a double-decker highway built in the 1970s that used to snake along the seashore, connecting the bridge over the bay to the southern part of downtown were most offices and the city airport are. In order to make life easier for the automobile (a mantra of the 20 century everywhere, right?) the Perimetral disconnected the most important buildings of colonial Rio from the bay that was its reason d’etre. The Guanabara bay was for centuries the geographical reason for the city – a defensible body of calm and deep waters that allowed the Portuguese ships to deck in safety. Visiting the Paço Imperial, Praça 15 and Praça Mauá in its close connection with the water, unobstructed by the Perimetral – is a sight to behold.
But there is an even more tragic demolition that we must consider part of the legacy of Rio 2016: the destruction of Brazilian democracy. The Brazilian media will insist that the Olympics have nothing to do with the political crisis, but I believe that such connection is now beyond reasonable doubt. The process of using kickbacks from large infrastructure projects to finance political campaigns was widespread practice. So far, only the left has been blamed for it, but the evidence points to all.
All this should be just another case of bad infrastructure planning and investment. But it is much worse. Over the past 10 years, Rio has implemented an entire model of city building that’s relied on gentrification, campaign finance kickbacks and forced relocations; now that model is being used by the entire country. As The New York Times recently wrote, the political party that ruined Rio is the same that is supporting a coup against Dilma Rousseff.
This week the Brazilian senate voted again to proceed with the ousting of president Rousseff. Eleven of the forty-nine senators that voted against her are under investigation for all kinds of corruption while the charges against Rousseff are related to using money from state banks without authorization….. to keep the social programs afloat! Rousseff’s government was incompetent and politically innate but that should not be reason for an impeachment. Members of the interim government were even caught on tape saying that they needed to oust Rousseff in order to stop the corruption investigations. None of that matters for the Brazilian elite. As I wrote before, it was never about the (corrupt) means, it is about the (redistributive) ends. That democracy is demolished in the process is a minor detail for those on the right. Any resemblance with the Republican playbook in the US is not a coincidence.
Except for the positive impact of the demolition of the Perimetral, it’s sad to perceive that Rio 2016 might be remembered for what is missing. Thousands of families had their homes demolished and were pushed further out of the city, away from services and away from opportunities. It will take a while to rebuild the lives of those relocated.
Rebuilding Brazilian democracy is a much bigger challenge, one of Olympic proportions.