Globalização e desafios urbanos: Políticas públicas e desigualdade social nas cidades brasileiras

Abstract

Several cycles of economic growth avoided a fairer distribution of wealth, exacerbating social inequalities and increasing poverty of urban populations in Brazil. This heritage is worsened in the present by the diminishing role of the state, replacing the universal character of social rights - most importantly essential services like education and health - for casual and corporate procedures that respond, in a subordinate way, to the demands of the new period of global accumulation. Adding to the historic instability, the abandonment or privatization of public services is accompanied by a new cycle of unemployment, explicit or hidden, that allows the state to contribute to the strengthening of poverty and social exclusion. This text portrays the polarization of social classes by the cohabitation of places of superfluous sophistication representations with the trivialization of life reproduction. The metropolis turns into its opposite: from a position of vehicle for innovations and cultural growth it transmutes into a scenery of fear and social antagonism.