BRICS-Cities

BRICS-Cities

One of BRICS-Urbe’s first research efforts. It consists of the formulation of a conceptual resource for comparative studies of BRICS cities. Around the concept of BRICS-cities, we sought to find major agendas for urban development that, in one way or another, guided urbanization processes in the BRICS countries. In general, we understand that the most significant BRICS cities and city networks were being transformed socially and spatially through two contrasting, but equally central, agendas: the capital attraction agenda, which commodifies and prepares citizens to be sold as attractive spaces for various types of private and public, national and international investments; and the agenda, or counter-agenda, of the right to the city, which, in contrast to the previous one, seeks to transform cities into spaces of citizenship and rights. The delimitation of these two great agendas allows us to perceive the set of actors that relate and dispute urban spaces, as well as their interests and strategies. This project resulted in a series of publications, including fact sheets, flowcharts, monitors, policy briefs, and a book that brings together theoretical studies and case studies on urban development processes in BRICS. All can be downloaded for free on this page.

Publications