Housing Policy and Socio-Spatial Displacement in Pre-Olympics Rio de Janeiro
UW Bascom Hall 500 Lincoln Dr. , Madison, Wisconsin
Lecture: Housing Policy and Socio-Spatial Displacement in Pre-Olympics Rio de Janeiro
When: 4:00 p.m.
Where: 260 Bascom
Presented by Meg Healy, Senior, Geography & Political Science
As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, the Brazilian government has invested tens of millions of dollars in its first large-scale public housing program. Minha Casa Minha Vida (in English, "My House My Life") is tasked with constructing 100,000 housing units in Rio by 2016, representing a key component of the city's pre-Olympics urban revival effort. Families forcibly removed from their homes to make way for the development of Olympic infrastructure will occupy approximately half of this new housing stock. Rio is not the first Olympic host to be criticized for displacing residents nor will it likely be the last. An estimated 2,000 individuals were displaced in preparation for the 2014 Games in Sochi, while at least 1.5 million people were displaced before the 2010 Games in Beijing. While considerable literature has investigated mega events and corresponding displacement, further analysis of Brazilian housing policy illuminates the complex dynamics between the Brazilian state and the International Olympic Committee in promoting socio-spatial displacement. This research investigates the role of Minha Casa Minha Vida in enabling processes of urban displacement in pre-Olympic Rio and argues that critical assessment of local housing policies is essential to understanding the legacy of the 2016 Summer Olympics and reduce the risk of replicating the same social inequities in future host cities.
Sponsored by The Brazil Initiative & Division of International Studies
Free & Open to the Public