Passing the Torch: Urban Apartheid and the 2016 Summer Olympics

摘要

The Olympic Games are perhaps the world's longest enduring mega-event. The Games have been the site of culturally iconic moments and host cities are welcoming backdrops delivering a polished combination of hospitality and national pride. Increasingly, developed countries in Europe and North America are shying away from hosting such mega-events citing their exorbitant development costs. Thus, developing countries are more commonly hosting events such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games. These events are widely perceived as premier venues in which a host country can showcase its emerging status and court foreign investment on a global stage. However, marginalized residents of the host cities often find themselves paying the price of transformative development in the form of massive forced displacement. Although, displacement takes place in host cities of the Global North, the scale witnessed in developing countries is unrivaled. The "Marvelous City" of Rio de Janeiro, host of the 2016 Olympic Games, is no exception.;This case study examines the commodification of the urban landscape in the absence of democratic planning processes and without transparent procedures as experienced in Vila Autodromo. Data collection was conducted through semi-structured interviews of key informants, content analysis of the Olympic publications, and the non-participant observations of protests, site visits, and Olympic imagery.;The rising economic costs of mega-events and their associated urban development have been well documented. Yet, scholarly narratives of the accompanying social costs of such development are limited. The data collected in Rio de Janeiro revealed a systematic assault on the daily lives of the favela residents and the deliberate collusion of the government tasked to protect them. In short, the violent creation of an ideal urban fabric has exacerbated existing housing shortages, incited violence, and reaffirmed economic and racial stratifications fueled by private interests and subsidized by the Brazilian government. Urban planners played an integral part in these events, revealing the critical role of advocacy and communicative planning as the bridges connecting practitioners and academics.