Undoing the right to the city: World Cup investments and informal settlements in Fortaleza, Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the Global South, the notion of the right to the city has increasingly been used to challenge the effects of uneven development on vulnerable informal residents. Yet, under a neoliberal spatial regime, acknowledging rights of informal residents does not necessarily lead to increasing access to the opportunities that cities produce. The article documents a contradictory process of, simultaneously, institutionalization of rights and implementation of profit-driven urban investments associated with 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. It is based on local-level, case-specific analysis of a dispute around the mega-event mobility investments and the demands of residents of Lagamar—a low-income, informal community in Fortaleza—adopting participant observation methods during a 3-year field research period. The case illustrates how Brazilian right to the city policies have gone beyond the mere recognition of land rights of informal residents, yet they have fallen short of addressing the needs of the urban poor, highlighting the role of mega-event investments in this process. The contradiction of simultaneously expanding and eroding the rights of the urban poor in Brazil has given room for manipulative state practices that I have called “undoing the right to the city.”