Reinforcing uneven development: The financialisation of Brazilian urban redevelopment projects

The entrepreneurial city discourse has been adopted around the globe by policymakers, with the urban redevelopment project as one of its most representative symbols. The predominantly favourable discourse revolving around this new political economy of urban space is supported by claims that newly regenerated areas bring multiple benefits to the city and its citizens. These narratives have been used in Brazil to justify increasing reliance on an urban planning tool known as Urban Operations. This planning tool, developed in the 1990s, seeks to facilitate cooperation between public and private actors in the production of new urban spaces. While projected by some as a ‘magic formula’ that enables major urban redevelopment projects without public expenditure, the outcomes of Urban Operations often differ significantly from expectations. The cases of Água Espraiada (São Paulo) and Porto Maravilha (Rio de Janeiro) are used to demonstrate that regenerated areas, as preferred spaces for the penetration of financialised practices into the built environment, have brought forward new dynamics that are serving to reinforce pre-existing social inequalities and to exacerbate uneven development in Brazil’s main cities.