Gangster Urbanisation

The relentless verticalisation of Brasilian cities is not driven by consumer demand, but by property speculation, and the manufactured need for a ‘dream home’. “You can have it all,” “A perfect paradise for your family,” “Live your life to the max,” read the advertising slogans, that in terms of their mangled language and fraudulent promises are no different in Brasil than in the UK or indeed anywhere else. In the obscure world of fat brown envelopes and discrete handshakes an unholy alliance has emerged between the construction industry, real estate companies, politicians and organised crime. There is little interest in whether the water table, ground conditions and general infrastructure are capable of supporting such an exponential rise in apartment blocks. Neither is there any commitment or interest in addressing issues of chronic urban poverty that afflict all Brasilian cities. The only thing that matters is to build them faster, higher, and cheaper, and to sell them on as quickly as possible, leaving enough time to vanish before the cracks start to appear. Older neighbourhoods of low-rise housing on potentially valuable real estate are particularly vulnerable. That they might be valued architecturally or even listed makes little difference. Nothing can stand in the way of the city of the future, in which urban history and architectural design are wholly subordinate to the accumulation of capital. As for recalcitrant residents who refuse to move out of districts coveted by real estate speculators, they can be removed through ‘block bursting’, that is, the creation of a culture of fear designed to intimidate residents. Police patrols diminish and then virtually disappear altogether. Paid thugs infiltrate the area at night. Armed assaults reach absurd levels. Residents stop venturing out alone in the evening. Eventually for their own sanity and safety, people sell up. The directors of construction, criminal  and real estate empires celebrate. The historic city shudders as verticalization accelerates. Slowly but surely older once tranquil and sought after neighbourhoods  are enveloped and overshadowed by first one then another gated tower block. The dystopian representation of the future city is realised. The rich and well to do retreat upwards, above the thirtieth floor where the air is clean and the sun still shines. Formerly busy streets become concrete corridors of hot toxic winds inhabited  by an underclass stripped of citizenship. Law and order are fully privatised, and on the corpse of the old city a fractured canyon metropolis of weaponised vertical fortresses signals the advent of a new urban feudalism.