Capitalist production of space and environment: urban-environmental activism and green gentrification in Brazil

Abstract

A new urban fact has been gaining ground in several cities of the planet: The phenomenon of green gentrification. This article aims to test the application of the concept to three Brazilian cities: Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In the three cases, groups opposed to appropriation of the territory by the capital have mobilized to denounce the impacts publicly. The concept of green gentrification in Brazil, or its application in this country, has its own contours and involves problems that are different from the reality of the United States, where it was coined. Therefore, it is concluded that, on the one hand, green gentrification seems to be acquiring increasingly larger contours in Brazilian cities; on the other hand, it mobilizes actors opposed to this process in the contemporary arena of struggle in the cities.

space; green gentrification; environmental justice; urban activism; neoliberalism