Vila Autódromo: Rio de Janeiro – Rony Maltz e Guilherme Freitas

For the past few years, Rio de Janeiro has witnessed an accelerated process of urban transformations, whose most evident landmark is the city’s preparation for the 2016 Olympic Games. This process – and the conflicts it has provoked – has generated a profusion of images put into circulation by the press, by political propaganda, by autonomous researchers, militants and residents. Major constructions, demolitions, evictions and protests for housing became common signs of everyday life in Rio, evoking comparisons with other periods of the city’s history, such as the 1960s and early 20th century, also marked by turbulent remodeling of the urban space.

VILA AUTÓDROMO is a visual and textual essay about this moment of the city from the experience of a small community that occupies a narrow area between the old Autodrome (today’s Olympic Park), the Jacarepaguá lagoon and Avenues Salvador Allende and Ambassador Abelardo Bueno, two of the neighborhood’s main freeways. From the 500 families that made up the original community, there is only about 20 left. The initial project of the Olympic Park provided for the maintenance and redevelopment of Vila Autódromo as a social legacy of the Games, but the city council began to propose the removal of the residents to a housing complex erected in the region. Many rejected the change and came to elaborate an alternative project, together with planners and researchers. Residents’ resistance was reported in the national and international press, making the community a reference for other cases of evictions caused by constructions linked to the Games. Vila is a space where different ideas about the future of the city collide.