Where to for Brazil's Cities? Citizen Empowerment or Global Marketing?

An awakening interest in public space in Brazilian cities is emphasising the value of existing civic areas. Guilherme Wisnik, a critic, curator and professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, looks at the history and potential future of Brazil's urban spaces. He highlights how despite the introduction of innovative Modernist design in the mid‐20th century, which forged ‘a new relationship between architecture, urbanism and landscape design’, more recently the country's cities have been subject to the vicissitudes of market and political forces.