Rio de Janeiro Case Study

Imagine that you live in an elegant seaside city with white-sand beaches. It is warm all the time, and once a year, you get to take part in the world's most famous party. In the background are skyscrapers beneath towering, rounded peaks; many people say you are privileged to live in the most beautiful city in the world.

You are known as a 'Carioca,' and the city, of course, is Rio, the subject of movies and songs, home of Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, samba music, bossa nova, and Carnival.

Rio is a city of contrasts. Rio de Janeiro- 'River of January,' in Portuguese- lives up to its legendary status and is bursting with tourists, but there is a side of the city that struggles as well. Rio's poor live perched on hillsides, in slums called favelas, where the police often don't dare to go. Rio is still a developing city, facing huge challenges.

Development in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro is the second-largest city in Brazil both in population and economy, after Sao Paulo. Its metropolitan area contains over 13.6 million people.

Rio has a spectacular geographical setting recognized the world over. Rounded granite peaks jut from the coastal plain- Corcovado, Sugarloaf, and so forth- and the statue of Christ the Redeemer is a sign that Roman Catholicism is the primary religion.

Fig. 1 - Rio's geography shows the density of settlement in the flat areas, with granite mountains that are largely uninhabited

But space is at a premium in Rio, thanks to all those scenic mountains. There is not enough flat land to go around, and what flat land exists is already built up. This is why so many people live on hillsides, but these aren't safe.

In many ways, there are two Rios. The Rio of the middle and upper classes comprises 60% of the population, which is a percentage far higher than many megacities in Newly Emerging Economies (NEEs). Many Cariocas live at the level that people in the US and Western Europe live and receive the same quality of services. This mirrors Brazil as a whole, where the southernmost states in the country have development levels equal to those in developed countries.

Then there is the other Rio, the 40% who live in poverty. Like populations in poverty everywhere, Rio's millions of urban poor have not been able to share fully in the economic and social opportunities available. Healthcare, education, jobs, safety, infrastructure, and the environment are all problems the favela dwellers struggle to overcome on a daily basis.

Rio de Janeiro urban issues

Like any city its size, Rio faces many serious issues. These are particularly concerning for a city where so many jobs are tied to Rio's status as a major tourist destination and hub of international events such as the annual Carnival, the FIFA World Cup (2014), and the Summer Olympics (2016).

Growth, sprawl, and overpopulation

Rio has grown from 3 million in 1950 to over 13.6 million today.

The megacity is growing by over 0.6% per year. Though part of this is due to people having children, it is mostly a result of rural-to-urban migration. As in many countries across the world, cities are places where people from farming regions can go to find jobs as well as adequate healthcare and schooling. They are places of opportunity and promise.

The destination for many migrants is the favelas. These are often perched on slopes, but because so many hills are uninhabitable (too steep or off limits), they also sprawl out into the countryside. Many occupy whatever land they can, illegally, and build their dwellings from scratch in squatter settlements. This creates many social and environmental problems.

Overall, Rio is greatly overpopulated, with too many people living on too little land.

Infrastructure

The favelas, particularly the newer squatter settlements, like slums everywhere in the world, suffer from inadequate quality of housing, overcrowding, lack of or diminished access to electricity, unsanitary conditions of water, sewage, and garbage removal, and unpaved streets.

Crime

Though Rio is no worse than most other Brazilian cities, its favelas are world-famous for the criminal gangs that often run them. These gangs prevent police from entering and are known to engage in battles with government security forces.

In addition to the loss of habitat from uncontrolled development, Rio suffers from waste and air pollution issues. Untreated sewage as well as industrial pollutants like zinc enter coastal lagoons and destroy forests and fish alike. Air pollution comes from Rio's millions of vehicles, wood fires, and other sources of contaminants. Thousands die every year from diseases caused by poisoned air.

Fig. 2 - Waste in an environmentally protected area in Rio de Janeiro

Challenges for Rio de Janeiro

The main challenge for Rio de Janeiro is its growth, which needs to become sustainable.

If you were an urban planner, what would you do?

Many different approaches have been tried. Some have succeeded, and some have failed. Let's look at some of the main ways that Rio's challenges have been turned into opportunities.

Opportunities for Rio de Janeiro

See our explanations on Megacities and Urbanisation for an idea of how cities cope with their problems. For comparison in Africa, take a look at our Lagos Case Study.

Housing developments

Like many large cities, Rio has engaged in slum clearance. Favelas are often seen as impossible to upgrade, since they were built haphazardly, using poor quality materials, in geographically difficult or even dangerous areas like steep slopes.

Rio's answer to address unsanitary conditions in favelas, and also relieve congestion in the city, was to build modern housing developments in the suburbs.

Fig. 3: Cidade de Deus, a Rio housing development

These housing developments were planned to provide adequate places to live, modern services, and adequate access to health, education, and jobs. In many cases, despite the improvement, social problems accompanied the favela dwellers to the housing developments, and drugs and crime became very bad.

Pacifying Police Units

Rio has a problem with crime and police violence. The city introduced a solution to combat both- community policing programs known as Pacifying Police Units, or UPPs. They have been controversial, however.

Around 2008, the Brazilian military began to drive gangs out of the favelas, and UPPs moved in to establish a permanent police presence. However, the solution did not work as planned, and gangs have now retaken many neighbourhoods. Also, people in neighbourhoods were more in need of social programs that addressed basic needs like food, housing, and education, than they were of security.

Bike Rio and Bus Rapid Transit

How to relieve Rio's traffic congestion while taking a bite out of the air pollution? Bike Rio, also known as Bike Itaú, provides solar-powered bicycles for a rental fee. It is funded by Banco Itaú, a huge bank, and coordinated by the city government.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a system of mass transportation where instead of having trains or subways, which are very expensive to construct, certain lanes in streets and highways are dedicated to buses, and no other traffic is allowed on these special lanes, with their own covered stops. Brazil has one of the best-developed systems of BRT in the world, and Rio is no exception. Its system started in 2012 and has continued to grow, serving hundreds of thousands of passengers per day.¹

CTR Rio

Rio's main landfill, which opened in 2011 to address the city's waste problem, is a dump with a difference. Not only does CTR Rio, formally known as the Santa Rosa Center for Solid Waste Treatment, take care of the rubbish, but also it generates recycled water and jobs. All the water that runs off it is treated and clean. Having this facility allowed a lot of open-air dumps to close, which has been a good thing because open-air dumps contaminate the groundwater and cause many other problems as well.

Rio de Janeiro - Smart City

Rio de Janeiro is designated as a 'smart city.'² The idea is that technology makes us smart(er), so cities that make maximal use of technology can be designated as 'smart'- just as your phone is probably a 'smartphone.'

How is Rio smart? Let us count the ways...

1. Surveillance cameras. We know, these can be a drag, because they watch everything you are doing. However, in vast cities, they make security issues much easier to handle, allowing police, fire, ambulance, and other services an efficient means of detecting and responding to traffic accidents, crime, fire, and other problems.
2. Saving money. Many formerly 'dumb' machines are now 'smart' and are connected to the Internet, allowing their performance to be monitored, mapped, and even controlled. Heating and cooling systems in buildings, the flow of public transit, and many other aspects of a city can be carried out much more efficiently this way, saving tonnes of cash.
3. Energy efficiency. Smart cities help combat global warming. By using the power of interconnected technology to become more efficient, energy can be used better and less. This means less use of fuel and less emission of pollutants. Both of these help combat global warming and climate change.