Historically, urban planning language and administrative norms were mobilized to set the borders of the “outcast”. In the name of hygiene or war on drugs, popular territories were stigmatized and as such, marked to disappear. “Risk” has converted into the newest justification to establish the perimeters of ‘preferred territories’ under threat of eviction, to be used as new frontiers of capital expansion. As red dots on the map, these places can be deeply marked by violence and destruction in the name of legality. But in addressing this scenario, it is important to recognize that the city is under dispute and is also a permanent movement of emplacements, generating landscapes for life. Raquel Rolnik argues that, in this ‘urban warfare’, space is not the scenery where battles take place, but rather the object of these battles itself. In this context, the strategies to mitigate climate change impacts in the city should not be devised without a deep reading of the political economy of space.

This lesson will start with a lecture given by Raquel Rolnik, followed by a moment of interactions between the chairholder and the audience.