The occupation of the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, especially in the areas of Jacarepaguá, Vargens, Barra da Tijuca, and Recreio dos Bandeirantes, was deeply linked to the process of westward urban expansion that, throughout the 20th century, transformed the old Sertão Carioca into one of the city's main urban centers. Sertão Carioca was a name coined by the author Magalhães Corrêa, who in his extensive work from the early last century, described the vast region located between the city's two great mountain massifs. The hot, humid flat area was the setting for sugarcane cultivation and the establishment of mills during the colonial period. Later, the charcoal cycle and the continuation of agricultural production to supply the city's urban center made use of these lands, leaving little room for the remaining marshes, floodplains, and wetlands of the sedimentary lowlands of Jacarepaguá. Urban growth, especially over the last 50 years, has been overwhelming for the local environments, and the neighborhoods that serve the middle and upper-middle classes intertwine with pockets of favelas and a dense road network of neighborhoods where the car is the main means of transportation.
Image description: This is a photograph of a city with mountains in the background. On the left side, we see a series of buildings spread across the plain, with some green areas interspersed. As we move to the right, the number of buildings increases, forming a dense urban center. On the horizon, we see a line of mountains covered by clouds. The sky is blue with many white clouds.Occupation of the Baixada de Jacarepaguá, with the Maciço da Tijuca in the background
The expansion of the city and the growing demand for new residential and commercial areas forced a series of changes in land use. The landfill process in these low-lying areas, such as the marshes of Jacarepaguá and das Vargens, was one of the main mechanisms behind the region's transformation. Such areas were progressively filled in to allow for urbanization, leading to the construction of new neighborhoods and the Jacarepaguá airport, while straightened canals were built to drain and dry out these lands, quickly carrying water flows out to sea and enabling heavily paved occupation. More recently, this same occupation model has reached the Vargens region, dumping landfill over organic, geotechnically unstable soils. Residential subdivisions, condominiums, and commercial spaces compete for every inch of urban land in anticipation of the "arrival of the city," which grows more real all the time.
In the sandy strips along the seashore, the neighborhoods of Barra da Tijuca and Recreio added landfills in small stretches of interdune marshes and over the dunes themselves, which were destroyed, becoming very rare features in the local landscape today. The landfill process became even more impactful over time, which accelerated local transformations. Again, beyond the impacts directly on local ecosystems in terrain that was difficult to use, marked by dunes, lagoons, and wetlands, such areas were gradually transformed into some of the most valued in the city. This process generates impacts on socioeconomic dimensions that can be measured by the number of favelas springing up throughout this surrounding area, from Rio das Pedras, Gardênia Azul, Anil, and Curicica to the peripheralization of parts of Vargem Pequena and Vargem Grande.
Image description: This is an aerial photograph of a coastal area with a city along the beach. On the left side, we see mountains covered in green vegetation. Moving to the right, the landscape shifts into densely populated urban areas. The city stretches to the seafront, where the beach is visible. The sky is light blue with a few scattered clouds. There is no legible text in the image.Vargem Grande and Vargem Pequena as a real estate expansion frontier. The landfills bring a premonition of future flooding.
Image description: This is an aerial photograph of a coastal area with a spatial layout running from left to right and from foreground to background. On the left, we see green areas and distant buildings, while on the right there is a large green area covered with dense vegetation. In the center, there is a complex of residential buildings. In the background, we see the sea horizon with a clear blue sky above.Grounding oneself and isolating is the gift of a future united by the waters of the flood.
Image description: This is an aerial photograph of a mountainous area with dense vegetation. From the left side toward the center, we see rocky outcrops covered with green trees. As we move to the right, the terrain becomes flatter, revealing a city with buildings of various sizes. In the background, we see a blue lake and, beyond it, a line of tall buildings. The city stretches to the horizon, where the clear blue sky contrasts with the sea.Two brothers in a partnership that's anything but brotherly, self-segregated on the pure islands.
Image description: This is a photograph of an urban landscape with mountains and vegetation. On the left side, we see a densely populated city with buildings of various sizes. Moving to the right, the terrain rises, revealing an imposing rock formation. In the background, farther away, there is a line of trees and smaller buildings. The sky is light blue with a few scattered clouds.The relief patterns repeat themselves across the landscape, just as the patterns of occupation do. The landscape of the city's expansion front already reveals its segregated construction between social classes
The urbanization of the 1980s finds in Barra da Tijuca an important spatial landmark that denotes the type of city that would be consumed in later decades: Barrashopping, shopping show. The advertising of the time said "the mystery of life is to search, everything one imagines is in the same place," and there an area of more than two hectares was found, on the reverse side of the main sandy ridge of the coastal plain, with a gentle slope toward the marshes and the banks of Lagoa da Tijuca, where landfills were made for the parking lots on the "Américas level" and "Lagoa level" and for the construction of its more than 700 stores. The socio-spatial tone was set, and the condominiums of high-rise towers built for the housing of the emerging class of the 1980s became part of the city, which turned over the sandy ridges all the way to Pontal do Recreio. The neighborhood came to house large condominiums, more shopping centers, and infrastructure geared toward road transport, mainly the private car. The former Sertão thus turned into a real estate hub, attracting mainly investor developers focused on the middle and upper classes, who sought to live in self-segregated areas with all infrastructure available. As the flip side of the same coin of real estate speculation, it is also in this same decade that self-built favela areas explode, to house the working class, who to this day sell their labor in these condominiums and malls.
Image description: This is a photograph of a mountainous landscape with a city in the background. On the left side, there is a large rock covered in green vegetation. Moving toward the right, we see more rocks and green areas. In the center, there is a densely populated city with buildings of various sizes. Further to the right, there is an open area with sparser vegetation. On the horizon, we see more mountains and, in the background, the sea. The sky is light blue, with no clouds.Morro da Panela between Gardênia Azul and Rio das Pedras witnesses the intense urbanization of the working-class neighborhoods squeezed behind Lagoa da Tijuca.
Finally, Recreio dos Bandeirantes followed a similar path, with the urbanization of swampy land and the construction of new neighborhoods and residences, especially from the mid-1980s onward. Although it still retains some preserved areas, Recreio came to be seen as a high-end residential area, attracting an audience geared toward leisure and tourism, characteristics that set it apart from other regions of the city. In this way, the occupation of the West Zone and the transformation of the Sertão Carioca were emblematic of the last years of the city of Rio de Janeiro's growth and expansion, demonstrating an increasingly individualistic desire for living. A city "without corners," where "I live with my own" in spaces of social encounter that are combined with, and restricted to, spaces of consumption. The environmental costs go beyond destroyed ecosystems, reaching impoverished relationships in pure islands of selfishness.
