The 2024 edition of the BRISPO lecture series: Raquel Rolnik (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
The risk of risks: dispossessions and the right to the city [online only]
Raquel Rolnik is a professor, architect and urban planner with over 45 years of scholarship, activism and practical experience in planning, urban land and housing policies. Based in São Paulo, she is a full professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo and is currently the University Campus Mayor. In her career, she has held various government positions including Director of the Planning Department of the city of São Paulo (1989-1992) and National Secretary for Urban Programs of the Brazilian Ministry of Cities (2003-2007). She worked as a consultant in urban land policy and housing in several cities and different countries, and was the UN Habitat leading expert on housing and planning in post-conflict reconstruction in Kosovo and El Salvador. From 2008 to 2014 Ms. Raquel Rolnik was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council as UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing for a six-year mandate, ending June 2014. Since 2019 she organized a Research Action Lab (LabCidade), based in FAUUSP, to develop critical scholarship on urban policies and housing. An “Observatory of Evictions” is one of the main projects of LabCidade. The project includes a permanent cartography of evictions which are taking place in metropolitan São Paulo as well as the building of a network of organizations around both making those processes visible, advocating for compliance with the right to adequate housing and imagining alternative planning and projects. She authored several articles and books, including Urban Warfare: Housing and Cities in the Age of Finance (Verso 2018), A Cidade e a Lei (Studio Nobel), and São Paulo: o planejamento da desigualdade (Fósforo 2022) among others. She has a blog, a weekly radio program, and a permanent presence in public debate on housing in Brazil, Latin America, the US, the UK and several European countries.
About the lecture
Historically, planning language and administrative norms were mobilized to set the borders of the “outcast”. In the name of hygiene or the war on drugs, popular territories were stigmatized and as such marked to disappear. “Risk” has converted into the newest justification to establish the perimeters of territories under threat of eviction, performing the role of preferred territories to be used as new frontiers of capital expansion. As red dots on the map, these places can be deeply marked by violence and destruction in the name of legality. But in addressing this scenario, it is important to recognize that the city is under dispute and is also a permanent movement of emplacements, generating landscapes for life. We argue that, in this ‘urban warfare’, space is not the scenery where battles take place, but rather the object of these battles itself. In this context, the strategies to face climate change impacts on the city should not be faced without a deep reading of the political economy of space.
Participation is free, but registration via this form is mandatory. Please register at least two days before the lecture. After processing your registration, we will send you the URL to participate in the online webinars or provide you with the venue details. The complete programme of the lecture series is available here.
Photo: Diego Chambi
