A política da paisagem no PAC do Complexo do Alemão: da violência paisagística à busca por incidência política através do plano de ação popular do CPX

Abstract

This thesis critically analyzes the urban interventions carried out in the Complexo do Alemão, within the scope of Brazil’s Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), discussing the relationship between landscape politics, favela territorial dynamics, and the impacts of public works. The construction of the Alemão Cable Car, conceived as a symbol of urban integration, is interpreted as an expression of landscape violence — a concept proposed in this research as a theoretical contribution to Political Geography, referring to how the State imposes urban forms, images, and aesthetics that produce silencing and erasure of local memories and lived experiences. Grounded in Urban Political Geography and critical action research, the thesis articulates the academic perspective and the positionality of the researcher-resident, understanding the landscape as a field of symbolic, political, and affective dispute. The study demonstrates that the Popular Action Plan of the Complexo do Alemão (PAP-CPX), organized by the Raízes em Movimento Institute in partnership with universities and local collectives, constitutes an insurgent response to the State’s landscape policy. By transforming the territory into a space for deliberation and political incidence, the plan reveals the ability of favelas to produce knowledge, formulate public policies, and reconfigure the image of Alemão as a territory of creativity and collective power. This turning point is interpreted as the expression of an insurgent landscape—a form of collective enunciation that reclaims the right to represent and transform the territory itself. The analysis incorporates experiences derived from the PAP-CPX, such as the socio-environmental diagnosis of Travessa Laurinda, the community reuse project for the Cable Car, the creation of the IFRJ campus, and collaborative actions with CEPEDOCA/UFRJ, which exemplify practices of landscape citizenship—understood as the political and symbolic right to create, interpret, and reinvent the landscape through popular participation. The study also establishes a comparative dialogue with the experience of Medellín, showing that, while the Colombian Integrated Urban Projects (PUIs) sought to integrate communities into urban planning, the PAC interventions in Rio de Janeiro reinforced a technocratic and exclusionary model. The thesis concludes that, throughout the trajectory of the Complexo do Alemão, the landscape ceases to be a mere product of State policy and becomes a language of resistance and citizenship. The transition from landscape violence to insurgent landscape and landscape citizenship thus constitutes the interpretive core of the research, contributing to rethinking urban policies and expanding the field of Political Geography through analytical categories forged from the practices and knowledge of popular territories.