Foretold tragedies in peripheral urbanism in Brazil: the emblematic case of Petrópolis

Abstract

This work aims to discuss the factors that contribute to the occurrence of “announced tragedies” in Brazilian peripheral urbanism. Climate emergency caused extreme events that affect territorial management. In Brazil, the impacts of these events are most strongly felt by the low-income population, reinforcing the country's constitutive social inequality, subject to the consequences of its particular urbanization process historically marked by neglect of social housing policy. We take the tragedy that occurred in Petrópolis (RJ) on February 15, 2022 as an archetype of the crises arising from the combination of peripheral urbanism and extreme weather events. We present six previous occurrences of heavy rains in the city similar to the last disaster of 2022, which were chosen based on their magnitude and relevance, measured by their coverage in the media in documentary analysis. In the Petropolitan case, it can be seen that investment in structural measures lasts as long as the commotion generated by the disaster takes place. Once media attention and pressure dissipates, the results become naturalized and become part of the landscape. As an archetype, it elucidates how peripheral urbanization reproduces a pattern of occupation of urban territory that increasingly violates the population and is capable of removing the fortuitous element from these tragedies, making them certain events, therefore, announced.