Constructing a sustainable ‘tomorrow’: iconic architecture and progressive neoliberal place-making in Rio de Janeiro’s ‘Little Africa’

Rio de Janeiro’s long-marginalised, majority Afro-descendant old port area, home to the remains of the Americas’ largest slave disembarkation wharf and Brazil’s first favela, has been subjected to recurring elite-led ‘revitalisation’ projects. A contemporary plan, Porto Maravilha (Marvelous Port), seeks to address the region’s decline through a culture-led, public-private development scheme that refashions this space as a tourist and residential hub. Based on participant-observation, interviews with protagonists, and discursive analysis of official texts, this article analyses the most spectacular addition to Rio’s previously derelict waterfront—the grandiosely titled Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow)—to demonstrate how efforts to neoliberalise space, within this postcolonial and settler-colonial urban context and beyond, are increasingly given a progressive twist. Drawing from Leslie Sklair’s pathbreaking analysis of the political economy of architectural ‘iconicity’, I interrogate the socio-spatial dimensions of the Museum as a starchitect-designed and utopian site that promotes sustainability and community empowerment, but simultaneously cultivates a market-friendly ethos. Invoking Nancy Fraser, I argue that the Museum represents an emblematic case of ‘progressive neoliberal place-making.’ Through analysing global city-making processes in Rio’s ‘Little Africa’, this article addresses longstanding lacunae in IPE and IR related to the centrality of race and colonialism in global capitalism.