Ecocide in Rio’s backlands: Contradictions between institutional urban planning oriented towards the real estate market and its own environmental guidelines in Vargens, West Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro

Authors

  • Ricardo Ramos Machado Bitencourt PROURB-FAU-UFRJ

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.48075/amb.v6i2.33078

Abstract

Ecocide in Rio’s backlands: Contradictions between institutional urban planning oriented towards the real estate market and its own environmental guidelines in Vargens, West Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro

 

Abstract

This article will seek to articulate elements of a theoretical universe in the fields of Political Ecology and Urbanism to address the reference case that has been investigated by the author: the contradictions between market-oriented institutional planning and the environment in the neighborhoods of Vargem Grande and Vargem Pequena in the West Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Although anchored in an expanded theoretical universe, we work, therefore, with a well-defined territorial outline in these neighborhoods.

At the center of this interdisciplinary movement, we will resort to crossing the geological analysis of the Jacarepaguá Sedimentary Basin, as a fundamental scientific basis for understanding the territorial outline, comparing it with the institutional plans proposed for these neighborhoods. Geological analysis is completely ignored in institutional planning, from the first versions of the Vargens Urban Structuring Project (PEU) to the current urban legislation proposed in the city's new Master Plan, sanctioned in January this year.

Contradictions manifest themselves on different scales of time and space. In addition to the first contradictions pointed out between the urban project and the environment, we have an explicit clash between the political subjects constituted in this territory and an institutionality submissive to the real estate market. The case of Vargens, although territorially delimited, is an example of the violent contradictions present today. It is an expanded and fatal situation of systemic, structural, political, economic, cultural crisis, and perspective of struggle in a context of environmental collapse global.

Keywords: politics, environment, conflict and urban planning.

Published

26-12-2024

How to Cite

RAMOS MACHADO BITENCOURT, R. Ecocide in Rio’s backlands: Contradictions between institutional urban planning oriented towards the real estate market and its own environmental guidelines in Vargens, West Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro. AMBIENTES: Revista de Geografia e Ecologia Política, [S. l.], v. 6, n. 2, 2024. DOI: 10.48075/amb.v6i2.33078. Disponível em: https://e-revista.unioeste.br/index.php/ambientes/article/view/33078. Acesso em: 22 may. 2025.