Metropolises in pandemic times: mapping subversive territories in the Metropolitan Regions of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article analyzes the crossings generated by Covid-19 in the daily life of the peripheries of the metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The crisis has highlighted structural problems that conventional planning tends to cover up, exposing the limits that State and capital have in providing solutions for them. The results showed a relationship between Covid-19's socio-spatial dynamics and the city's hierarchized structure. Starting with provocations around the notion of “subversive planning”, the dialectic between the representation of spaces and the spaces of representation (Lefebvre) is incorporated, identifying popular practices and territorial networks that are being mobilized in the peripheries and have mitigated the impacts of the pandemic and enabled to expand the outreach of urban policies and health services.

Covid-19; urban peripheries; social networks; Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro; Metropolitan Region of São Paulo