Brazilian Cities
Urbanization and Development in Salvador, Brasília, and Rio De Janeiro
NOT OFFERED SUMMER 2008
Overview
Brazilian cities offer wonderful and diverse examples of the great possibilities and difficult problems of urbanization confronting countries throughout Latin America and the rest of the developing world.
This special six-credit summer program in Brazil offers students the chance to experience urban innovations in three stunning cities:
- Salvador, the heart of Afro-Brazilian history and culture,
- Brasilia, the most intensively planned large city in the world, and
- Rio de Janeiro, a key player in politics and culture.
Students take two three-credit courses, taught in English, with faculty from Cornell and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Through these courses, field trips, and meetings with local scholars, top city officials, and activists, students examine:
- the growth and development of these large cities and their regions,
- new experiments with democratic governance,
- efforts at metropolitan planning for transportation, housing, and land-use regulation,
- attempts to stimulate the economy,
- migration from the countryside, and
- environmental issues.
Since the re-establishment of formal democracy in Brazil and the inclusion of urban-reform elements in that country’s new Constitution, experiments in Brazilian cities have been studied worldwide. Now this special opportunity is open to students enrolled in this program.
Photo Slideshows
View slideshows from all three Brazilian cities:
Courses
All students in this program must enroll in both of the following three-credit courses:
CRP 376/676 LATIN AMERICAN CITIES / THREE CREDITS
This course offers students an opportunity to understand urban dynamics in a rapidly changing region of the world. We ask how colonial powers, the nation-state, and global economic forces have shaped Latin American urban landscapes and the patterns of daily life in the city.
The first part of this course explores the social, political, and spatial dimensions of these processes. Topics include rural-urban flows, sociospatial segregation, housing, environment and employment. The second half of the course focuses on responses to these social and economic transformations: violence and repression, coping strategies, the informal sector, social movements, and transmigration.
CRP 377/687 THE CITY IN BRAZIL / THREE CREDITS
Students attend classes in Brazil. Cornell professors teach with Brazilian faculty from the acclaimed planning department at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. We meet on site with local scholars, top city officials, and activists. In Salvador, we focus on Afro-Brazilian culture, development of the Northeast region, and innovative city politics and planning. This magnificent city once was the nation’s capital and the chief slave-importer of the Americas. In Brasília, we see how the plan isolates the curious Plano Piloto from the satellite cities. We visit neighborhoods and discover how legions of impoverished Northeastern migrants have created housing. In this extraordinary modernist city on the high savannah, we gauge Brazil’s influence on continent-wide patterns of regional development. In Rio de Janeiro, we live in Latin America’s most beautiful metropolis. We study patterns of housing, transportation, and work, observing great contrasts of growth and decline, wealth and poverty.
Faculty
Students study with a teaching team in each city made up of city officials, planners, and Brazilian scholars together with faculty from Cornell University and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. These three teams host tours, lectures, and workshops, and oversee projects designed to help students make international comparisons and evaluate options.
The program is led by Professors William Goldsmith and Carlos Vainer. Prof. Goldsmith has been involved in teaching, research, and planning for forty years, mainly in the United States and Latin America. Within Cornell’s Department of City and Regional Planning, he has served as department chair and director of graduate studies, the undergraduate program in Urban and Regional Studies, and the junior-year study-abroad program in Rome. Prof. Goldsmith has lived and worked in Brazil, and has published widely on urbanization and economic development. His 1992 book Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities won the prestigious Paul Davidoff award.
Carlos Vainer is a professor in the Institute for Urban and Regional Planning and Research at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Dr. Vainer's research focuses on the relationship between contemporary urban planning and social movements in Rio de Janeiro. Of central importance are issues of land & resource rights for formalizing communities and capacity building for project-affected populations. Vainer trains multi-disciplinary student research groups to work in these and other communities where social organizations are lobbying the government for reforms, both urban and rural.
Learn firsthand about
- Social inequities in Latin American Cities
- Favelas: what are they?
- Brazilian industrialization and urbanization
- Racial and gender relationships in contemporary Brazil
- Urban social movements in Brazil
- Informality in housing, transportation, and the economy
For more information
Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.