Inequality and the commodification of urban life: challenges to sustainable development in contemporary Brazil

This paper presents a discussion about the unequal nature of the transformations in urban living conditions resulting from the prevailing neoliberal economic model in Brazil. In a historical perspective, it suggests that the social organisation in urban areas has been increasingly subordinated to the logic of the financial capital. As a result, housing markets and infrastructure services have been completely transformed into a locus of money and land commodification. In the current process of urban expansion, inequalities have been strengthened within cities overwhelmed by violence.inequality; urbanisation; neoliberal model; sustainable development; Brazil; urban life; commodification; sustainability; economics; violence; housing markets; infrastructure services.