City of clones: Facsimiles and governance in Sao Paulo, Brazil

São Paulo is a megacity defined by formal and informal patterns of urbanization. Informally urbanized spaces are not absent of state intent, despite appearances. Grassroots-led social and spatial practices for survival, agency and self-governance contribute to the reproduction of urban political order in surprisingly unoriginal and routinely recognizable ways. This article argues that these unexceptional informal practices can be understood as ‘facsimiles’ of their formal institutional originals. Using the example of cloned cars the article shows that the facsimile and the original are the same in form and function. Facsimiles do not exist outside of political authority, but are a byproduct and a component of it. They are indistinguishable in their bureaucratic deployment, recognition and acceptance as part of social and spatial order. This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage via https://doi.org/10.1177/001139211665729

Pacification of Favelas, Mega Events and the Creation of New Inequalities in the Global South: The Case of Rio de Janeiro.

Since the 1980s’ in Rio de Janeiro, local authorities have conducted the so-called 'drug on war' policy, which has fought mainly within the favelas between the police and drug gangs occupying these territories. Because of the high level of violence that characterized the city since that time, it has been perceived globally as a “city in war”. In recent years, with the aim of attracting investors and private capital within the city, Rio de Janeiro's policy makers favoured a global-scale urban competitiveness strategy aimed at organizing mega events. In fact, the city hosted the Football World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics Games in 2016 mong others. However, in order to prove itself as a competitive city, Rio had to clean up its image as a “violent place”. For this reason, in 2008 authorities created the “Pacific Police Units”, a program to recover some of the favelas previously occupied by criminal groups. This policy created inequalities for the lower strata of the population

Latin American urban development into the twenty-first century: towards a renewed perspective on the city

This article argues for a more systemic engagement with Latin American cities, contending that it is necessary to reconsider their unity in order to nuance the fractured cities perspective that has widely come to epitomize the contemporary urban moment in the region. It begins by offering an overview of regional urban development trends, before exploring how the underlying imaginary of the city has critically shifted over the past half century. Focusing in particular on the way that slums and shantytowns have been conceived, it traces how the predominant conception of the Latin American city moved from a notion of unity to a perception of fragmentation, highlighting how this had critically negative ramifications for urban development agendas, and concludes with a call for a renewed vision of Latin American urban life