Rio sobre Rochas

The landscape of Rio de Janeiro, this amalgam of mountains, valleys, beaches, and bays, is not the same as before. Not because time has erased its marks, but because the human, with their processes of construction and destruction, has rewritten the lines of the horizon. In every square meter of this land, where we today live, work, and coexist, there is a history of intervention. The city was not simply erected upon its relief; it was molded, reconfigured, filled, and cut. Rio de Janeiro is, to a large extent, a product of the modern will to “master nature”—a nature that, however, resists and recreates itself. The act of landfilling, one of the most forceful interventions in the formation of space, marked urban expansion from the first moments of colonization to the modern projects that design the city's contours. From the landfills in the port region to the new landfills in the western zone of the municipality, the Carioca landscape was altered to “create space for the new”—for the asphalt, for the housing, and the commercial centers. Where there were once mangroves, marshes, and lagoons, neighborhoods, avenues, and artificial beaches emerged, whose foundations have no other principle than the radical alteration of geography. The Aterro do Flamengo, for example, is an icon of this activity. We advanced over the sea, redesigning the waterfront, eliminating lagoons, floodplains, and marshes that were drained, filled, and transformed into an urban space that, though beautiful and functional, carries in its entrails the marks of this aggression. One might still question that in the past, the consequences of these actions were not known, but what is surprising is that the same practice reproduces itself today at the city's expansion front with the landfills in the lowland of Jacarepaguá, Barra da Tijuca and Recreio dos Bandeirantes with large real estate developments up to the areas of Vargens Pequena and Grande. The excavations, on the other hand, are the visible scars of the nature that was broken to clear a path for supposed urban progress. In Rio de Janeiro, many hills and mountains, which previously structured and defined the city, were cut, pierced, and dismantled to make way for constructions, roads, and infrastructure. The most emblematic of these excavations is the excavation of the Morro do Castelo, which transformed the landscape of the central region of Rio, not only altering the relief, but also erasing a significant part of the city's historical memory, giving way to modernity and the new neighborhoods of the center. In addition to their geographical implications, landfills and excavations have profound social and environmental consequences. The alteration of the bay waters, the destruction of coastal habitats, and the creation of risk areas on slopes reveal the tragic face of a landscape that is frequently forgotten in its sensitive dynamics. The transformations of Rio de Janeiro are not only physical, but also cultural and social. In many of these landfills and excavations, new forms of urban life emerged. But, just as the city was expanding over the sea and over the land, other forms of being and living were also fading away. The areas previously occupied by fishermen, by traditional communities, and by farmers were being replaced by luxury condominiums, shopping centers, and imposing avenues. The city of Rio de Janeiro, therefore, is a palimpsest, a sheet of land incessantly rewritten by various phases, intentions, and interests. What was once a bay rich in mangroves and restingas is today a set of neighborhoods and avenues that stretch over the sea, making the coastline a point of friction with the urban. The sea, which invades the city with its tides and surges, the sliding slopes, the overflowing rivers, remind us that the dynamics of the landscape are never completely mastered. The landscape is, rather, a field of forces where friction maintains a constant mutation. And so, the city of Rio de Janeiro continues, eternally marked by the scars of its construction.