Transforming Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics: another path to accumulation by dispossession?

Abstract

The intricate links between the Olympics and urban change have been theorised in diverse ways in critical urban studies, including readings of Olympic city-making in terms of enforcement of neoliberal entrepreneurial governance, gentrification through large-scale redevelopment projects, reproduction of growth-machine politics, and acquisition of symbolic capital through city branding politics. Following these points, we reflect in this paper on how the Olympics exacerbate wider trends in urban political economy under contemporary capitalism in the case of Rio 2016. We attempt to do so by turning to David Harvey’s (2003) conceptualisation of accumulation by dispossession. Our hypothesis is that this concept holds a sizeable heuristic value for making sense of the not-so-exceptional character of Olympic city-making in the present configuration of capitalism. Our findings confirm the relevance of Harvey’s elaboration on the empirical ground of sport mega-events but also outline limitations.