Rio de Janeiro Urban Expansion and the Environment Built Environment City Studies Series

Using Rio de Janeiro as the case study city, this book highlights and examines issues surrounding the development of mega-cities in Latin America and beyond. Complex dynamics of urbanization such as mega-event-driven development, infrastructure investment, and informal urban expansion are intertwined with changing climatic conditions that demand new approaches to sustainable urbanism. The urban conditions facing 21st century cities such as Rio emphasize the need to revisit urban forms, reintegrate infrastructure, and re-evaluate practices.

With contributions from 15 scholars from several countries exploring urbanism, urbanization, and climate change, this book provides insights into the contextual and environmental issues shaping Rio in the age of globalization. Each of the book?s three sections addresses an interdisciplinary range of topics impacting urbanism in Latin America, which will be accessible to researchers and professionals interested in urbanization, urban design, sustainability, planning, and architecture.

List of Figures

1. Introduction

Jose Gamez, Zhongjie Lin, and Jeffrey Nesbit

2. The Impact of Future Sea-level Rise on Rio de Janeiro: A Geological Perspective

Scott Hippensteel

3. One Katrina Every Year: The Challenge of Urban Flooding in Tropical Cities

Fernando Lara

4. Changing Informality: Gentrification of Favelas in Rio de Janeiro

Zhongjie Lin, Fernando Moreira, and Aline Nascimento

5. Staging the City, Transforming the Slum: FestiFavelization in Rio de Janeiro

Malte Steinbrink and Jose Gamez

6. Barra da Tijuca: Urban Planning Challenges in a Global Suburb

Lawrence Herzog

7. Elite Enclave of Barra da Tijuca

Alexandra Silva de Almeida

8. Costa, Coast, and Clay: A Modern Grid Revisited in Rio de Janeiro

Jeffrey Nesbit

9. Barra Olympic Park Project: Notes on the Design Process, Games and Legacy

Henrique Houayek

10. Urban Projects for Resilience in Flooding Areas

Erika Brum Palma Pereira and Maria Fernanda Lemos

11. Mixing Modernisms: Urban Design in the Era of Climate Change

Jose Gamez

12. Climate Adaptation in Rio: Promoting the Resilience of the Western Zone Coastal Area of Rio de Janeiro Maria Fernanda Lemos
13. Urban Planning for Resilience: Lessons Learned from Projects for Rio’s Western Zone

Rafael Saraiva

Index

José L.S. Gámez is the Associate Director of the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a founding member of the School’s Master of Urban Design program. His research explores cultural dimensions of architecture and urbanism, and it has appeared in The Journal of Urbanism and The Journal of Applied Geography, as well as the books Vertical Urbanism: Designing Compact Cities in China, Writing Urbanism: A Design Reader, Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism, and Latino Urbanism: The Politics of Planning, Policy and Redevelopment.

Zhongjie Lin is an Associate Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the former Director of the Master of Urban Design Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a co-founder of Futurepolis, an award-winning international design practice. His books include Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement and Vertical Urbanism, among others. He has received several prestigious awards for his research including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, an Abe Fellowship, and Graham Foundation grants.

Jeffrey S. Nesbit is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and a research fellow in the Office for Urbanization. He is founding director of the experimental design group Haecceitas Studio and former director of Seoul Studio, a design research program in South Korea. His research focuses on the evolution of the urban landscape through the lens of historical technology, political uncertainty, and environmental unpredictability. He has written extensively on infrastructure and urbanization and is the editor of Chasing the City: Models for Extra-Urban Investigations.