Rio De Janeiro: Urban Expansion and the Environment

Using Rio de Janeiro as the case study city, this book highlights and examines issues surrounding the development of mega-cities in Latin America and beyond. Complex dynamics of urbanization such as mega-event-driven development, infrastructure investment, and informal urban expansion are intertwined with changing climatic conditions that demand new approaches to sustainable urbanism. The urban conditions facing 21st century cities such as Rio emphasize the need to revisit urban forms, reintegrate infrastructure, and re-evaluate practices.

With contributions from 15 scholars from several countries exploring urbanism, urbanization, and climate change, this book provides insights into the contextual and environmental issues shaping Rio in the age of globalization. Each of the book’s three sections addresses an interdisciplinary range of topics impacting urbanism in Latin America, which will be accessible to researchers and professionals interested in urbanization, urban design, sustainability, planning, and architecture.

José L.S. Gámez is the Associate Director of the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a founding member of the School’s Master of Urban Design program. His research explores cultural dimensions of architecture and urbanism, and it has appeared in The Journal of Urbanism and The Journal of Applied Geography, as well as the books Vertical Urbanism: Designing Compact Cities in China, Writing Urbanism: A Design Reader, Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism, and Latino Urbanism: The Politics of Planning, Policy and Redevelopment.

Zhongjie Lin is an Associate Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the former Director of the Master of Urban Design Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a co-founder of Futurepolis, an award-winning international design practice. His books include Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement and Vertical Urbanism, among others. He has received several prestigious awards for his research including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, an Abe Fellowship, and Graham Foundation grants.

Jeffrey S. Nesbit is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and a research fellow in the Office for Urbanization. He is founding director of the experimental design group Haecceitas Studio and former director of Seoul Studio, a design research program in South Korea. His research focuses on the evolution of the urban landscape through the lens of historical technology, political uncertainty, and environmental unpredictability. He has written extensively on infrastructure and urbanization and is the editor of Chasing the City: Models for Extra-Urban Investigations.