Rio sobre Rochas

A face hidden beneath the beautiful plumage of the Rio de Janeiro landscape with its forested mountains and coastal lowlands exposes itself in disasters in a complex and cruel way. Behind the city's beauty, there exists a production of geographical space marked by constant risks, especially from landslides and floods. With population growth and the lack of urban planning, especially due to the almost non-existent housing policy over the last five decades, the risk has intensified with heavy rains and urbanism ordered by the logic of the real estate market. The relationship with the city's urban site becomes dramatic when disasters destroy lives, goods, and parts of the city, revealing, above all, the fragility of the most vulnerable areas. In the last half of the 20th century and in more recent decades, the slopes and the morro areas of the city have been the stage for recurring tragedies. Morro do Borel, in Tijuca, the neighborhoods of Cosme Velho and Santa Tereza, and Morro do Vidigal, in Zona Sul, are just some examples of locations that, year after year, become victims of landslides. The housing crisis in the city and the historical slowness of responses to deal with geological risk have transformed many spaces into extremely vulnerable areas. Our morros, densely populated, and the floodable lowlands, have seen their communities buried by mud during periods of rain, with tragedies occurring in sequence, since 11967, 1988, 1996, 2003, 2010, 2018, 2019, and the last in 2023. Sliding is something natural for the Carioca mountains under the tropical climate; what is not natural is having residents underneath. Risk is a social construction, a product of the absence of housing policies in the city. A city that does not prioritize inhabiting, living well, but rather obeys the logic of the real estate market, which utilizes surplus value, differential rent, and the exchange value of properties to grow, or growth to profit. Living well in Rio de Janeiro is not a right of the population; it is a privilege of the few. Similarly, also provoked by "ordered" growth, another type of risk: floods, devastate the Carioca populations under heavy rains in the lowland areas. While the slopes collapse, the low-lying areas of the city become a true scene of chaos when rains fall torrentially. The old areas of marshes and mangroves filled in over the centuries, such as the classic example of Praça da Bandeira, are the regions most susceptible to flooding. The neighborhoods located there become, after any stronger rain, true revived marshes, areas that, historically, face drainage problems and end up flooded under the strong normal tropical storms. These floods do not only paralyze the city, but affect the lives of thousands of residents who see their streets transformed into lakes and torrents. In Zona Sul, the fill of Jockey Clube over the marshy areas at the foot of Serra da Carioca in the neighborhoods of Jardim Botânico and Gávea remains a barrier to the waters coming down from the massif and guarantees the flooding of the road network under heavy rains. The excess of waterproofing, the absence of infiltration areas or water rest areas, induce the excessive accumulation of rainwater, causing low-lying areas to become submerged. For a coastal city, this is truly a paradox. The North and West Zones, where the lowlands are wider and the city expands, guarantee seasonal floods for their urban settlements on full soils, called hydromorphic, which, as the name itself says, were formed under high water tables. What is not asked is how they built subdivisions and extensive housing areas in these environmental conditions? Marshes always flood, therefore, paving them and occupying them is a clear construction of risk. But the rentier logic of urban space does not correspond to the logic of reading the landscape and its functionality, which should underpin planning. In parallel, some municipal attempts (depending on the administration) have prepared the city to deal with these issues, advancing in drainage works, alert systems, and slope containment. However, acting on the consequences helps, but does not resolve. Actions such as the restoration of riparian forests, river desilting, and containment works in various risk areas are some of the strategies adopted. Nevertheless, the key to solving these issues necessarily passes through preventive policies that bring quality of life to the citizen, seeking urban planning and, principally, housing policy. The occupation based on the city as a commodity continues to be a problem for the Carioca.