Helping the Poor Stay Put: Affordable Housing and Non-Peripheralization in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: Brazil Institute
Abstract
This project seeks to develop a deeper understanding of new affordable housing experiments in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To do so, the interdisciplinary, multi-national project team will conduct a three-year study, guided by the following questions: How do these centrally-located, differently-modelled housing projects affect, in different ways and over time, the economic circumstances and livelihoods of the people who live in them? How do they shape, in different ways and over time, the social interactions, exchanges, and ties among project residents and between project residents and their neighbors outside? How do they impact, in different ways and over time, residents' norms of gender, kinship, and sexuality? To what extent does each housing project type have distinctive effects over time on the political views and behavior of its residents? To investigate these questions, the team will take an in-depth look at a specific range of organized efforts to help the poor stay put in a central district of Rio de Janeiro. The chosen setting will be the old port area downtown, which is currently undergoing a major planned "revitalization". In this district, the team will be able to observe and explain, within the same neighborhood, the differential impacts on the poor of a variety of different models for creating centrally-located affordable housing.
Planned Impact
Broader Impacts:
By bringing together anthropologists, a geographer, an architect/urban planner, and a housing advocate, this project will serve as an example of productive collaboration between these disciplines, as well as across the academic/advocate divide. Second, by bringing together researchers from three continents - the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil - the
project also promises to yield benefits for international cooperation, by developing good practices for international collaborations and focused reflection on cultural and national differences. Third, it is expected that this project will contribute to international policy discussions about affordable housing in the global south. Project activities and results will be presented to the Affordable Housing Institute, a major US-based venue for discussions and analyses of affordable housing worldwide; to the British Chartered Institute of Housing; to the United States Urban Institute's Center on International Development and Governance, in particular to the Center's thematic area on Harnessing the Power of Urbanization; to the Observatorio das Metropoles, the major Brazil-based research-and-policy think-tank on housing, to which one of the team members belongs; and to the Brazilian Federal Ministry of Cities, which is keenly interested in analyses of social housing.
By bringing together anthropologists, a geographer, an architect/urban planner, and a housing advocate, this project will serve as an example of productive collaboration between these disciplines, as well as across the academic/advocate divide. Second, by bringing together researchers from three continents - the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil - the
project also promises to yield benefits for international cooperation, by developing good practices for international collaborations and focused reflection on cultural and national differences. Third, it is expected that this project will contribute to international policy discussions about affordable housing in the global south. Project activities and results will be presented to the Affordable Housing Institute, a major US-based venue for discussions and analyses of affordable housing worldwide; to the British Chartered Institute of Housing; to the United States Urban Institute's Center on International Development and Governance, in particular to the Center's thematic area on Harnessing the Power of Urbanization; to the Observatorio das Metropoles, the major Brazil-based research-and-policy think-tank on housing, to which one of the team members belongs; and to the Brazilian Federal Ministry of Cities, which is keenly interested in analyses of social housing.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
Jeffrey Garmany (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Burdick J
(2024)
The Right to Occupy: Moral Economies of Occupation and Social Housing in Urban Brazil
in Latin American Research Review
Burdick J
(2020)
Waging Class Struggle With Plants: Intra-class differentiation and greening labor in a public housing project in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
in City & Society
Garmany J
(2023)
Urban orientalism and the informal city in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
Garmany J
(2019)
Hygienisation, Gentrification, and Urban Displacement in Brazil
in Antipode
Garmany J
(2020)
'An open secret': Public housing and downward raiding in Rio de Janeiro
in Urban Studies
Garmany Jeff
(2018)
Understanding Contemporary Brazil
Richmond M
(2023)
Rent Gaps, Gentrification and the 'Two Circuits' of Latin American Urban Economies
in Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie
Title | Videos documenting social housing in Rio |
Description | These videos represent a collaboration between our research team and our research participants. They detail the concerns and struggles of our research participants involved with social housing in Rio, and also help us, the research team, to communicate the broader goals of this research project. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2018 |
Impact | Hundreds of views on youtube, and the videos are being used in university courses to help disseminate the findings from this research. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ika-jw0Qu9Q&t=3s |
Description | We can report two key findings thus far, both of which are incorporated in journal articles currently under review. The first is that, while at first glance, gentrification appears to be growing in Rio de Janeiro and other cities in Latin American, we believe that other important processes are also at work. These other processes, in some cases, push low-income residents out of central urban areas even more violently than gentrification, while in other instances, they enable certain lower-income residents to stay put. This complicates broader understandings of gentrification and inner-city inequality, showing that, perhaps, gentrification is not the most suitable lens for making sense of urban change in cities like Rio de Janeiro. Related to this, our second key finding is that there appears to be higher levels of inter-class mixing in social housing in central Rio than existing studies would predict. For example, to read the academic literature on social housing in central urban areas, one would expend to find very little (if any) mixing and collaboration between residents of different social classes (e.g., working class and middle-class families). Our findings show that, while limited, social housing in Rio appears to evidence higher levels of inter-class collaboration than one would expect, challenging oft-held presumptions about the effects and limits of social housing in urban areas. |
Exploitation Route | These findings contribute to ongoing debates in urban geography and anthropology about the effects of social housing, capitalist development, and urban change in the Global South. This contributes, on the one hand, to discussions of public policy and urban development, and, on the other, to postcolonial critiques of urban and social theory. |
Sectors | Education Government Democracy and Justice |
Description | 2016-2018: Our findings have contributed to the work of several different social movements working to secure housing for low-income people in Rio de Janeiro. These contributions have been modest and we hope that when we complete the study, we will have much more to offer these different groups. In the meantime, however, we have fed back our initial findings to the different housing movements we are working with, and we even produced a video to explain the study, the motivations of the research, and foreground the importance of the issues involved in this research (i.e., housing for low-income people). This video is available on youtube, and these social movements have been able to use this video by showing it to their participants (and others) to help explain the urgency of their work. This video has also served as a valuable teaching tool (in classes) for members of the research team. 2018-2019: Our goals and objective remain the same, but we have made progress with respect to research outputs and collaboration. We have produced two more videos in collaboration with our research participants, and these videos have generated very positive feedback and proved useful in outreach activities. We are also beginning to present our initial research findings at academic and public events, and in 2019, I published a book, co-authored with Prof. Anthony Pereira, titled "Understanding Contemporary Brazil" (Routledge). This book addresses a wide variety of academic issues, but included in the book is discussion of this research project and broader questions of social housing and urban poverty in Brazilian cities. I also have an article currently under review, co-authored with Matthew Richmond in São Paulo, Brazil, that draws on data from this research project. This is all to say that the project is going well, and where we paid particular attention to the requests and concerns of our research participants during the initial years of data collection, we are now shifting our attention to academic outputs as the project nears completion. (Though NOT at the expense of our research participants, who continue to collaborate and make contributions to the project.) |
First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Other |
Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
Description | "Beyond populism: The rise of Bolsonaro in Brazil," Latin America and Caribbean Centre, The London School of Economics. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Roundtable debate considering recent political change in Brazil. I presented initial findings from our research in Rio, and considered these findings within the context of recent political changes in Brazil. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | http://www.lse.ac.uk/lacc/events/Beyond-Populism-the-rise-of-Bolsonaro-in-Brazil |
Description | "Gentrification, hygienization, and processes of urban displacement in Brazil." Centre of Latin American Studies, Cambridge University. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Research talk at the Centre of Latin American Studies, Cambridge University: "Gentrification, hygienization, and processes of urban displacement in Brazil." Roughly 50 people in attendance, generated discussion about the research project and broader issues of urban displacement around the world (including in the UK). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | http://www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk/clas-open-seminar |
Description | "Politics and collective mobilization in post-PT Brazil," Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Invited lecture as part of full-day event on recent political change in Brazil. I presented initial findings from our research in Rio, and contextualised these findings within Brazil's broader political landscape. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://ilas.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17883 |
Description | Conference presentation, Association of American Geographers 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | In April, 2017, Dr. Jeff Garmany and Matthew A. Richmond organized a panel session at the Association of American Geographers in Boston, MA (USA). The title of this session was "Beyond gentrification? Considering new explanations of urban change", and in this session Drs. Garmany and Richmond presented an original research paper titled, "Limits to gentrification in Brazil". This paper drew on initial findings from this research project, and this grant and the funding sources for this research were specifically mentioned during the presentation. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Interview with BBC Brazil |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Gave interview to BBC Brazil about recent political change in Brazil. The interview also addressed this research project in Rio de Janeiro, and the challenges faced by low-income urban residents in Brazil. Initial findings from research were discussed. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf-x3FJXsQY |
Description | Interview with UM BRASIL about inequality and challenges facing Brazil |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Interview with Brazilian media outlet, UM BRASIL, discussing current challenges in Brazil. Initial findings from this research project were discussed. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRUrkM2KO7E |