Interests: Cultural urban policy | City marketing and urban branding | Culture in favelas in Rio de Janeiro | Digitalization of society and urban space | Gentrification in Berlin| Neoliberal placemaking strategies | Social and cultural resistance movements | Urban planning and policy in Berlin
The (Dis)Connected City: Berlin’s New Urban Brand
2023-2028 Center for Metropolitan Studies – TU Berlin
Funding: Technische Universität Berlin
After two decades of emphasizing the sales potential of culture and creativity, recent city marketing campaigns worldwide have shifted to buzzwords such as “digitalization,” “innovation,” and “connectivity.” These terms signal the emergence of a new, competitive city brand that highlights a city’s capacity to produce high-tech and knowledge—the key drivers of today’s global economy.
The 2020 city marketing campaign “We Are One Berlin” was a pivotal moment in Berlin’s efforts to attract global investment and skilled technology and knowledge workers to the German capital. This campaign, which emphasizes connectivity through a shared sense of community, is accompanied by public initiatives promoting the expansion of digital infrastructure (e.g., data centers), the development of innovation districts (e.g., Urban Tech Republic), and the recruitment of startups and branches of major international technology companies (e.g., Google, Amazon). The image of a connected Berlin is further reinforced by the real estate sector, which is increasingly marketing projects tailored to hybrid and flexible workspaces that address new ways of working and living, often targeting startups, mobile, and tech companies as potential tenants or buyers.
This research project aims to understand the “connected city” brand and examine how it is appropriated by various actors in Berlin’s urban landscape: city marketing agencies, policymakers, real estate developers, and both local and mobile citizens. The goal is to uncover the origins of this narrative, the power dynamics behind its dissemination, and its impact on urban space and communities. This impact includes the inequalities arising from an increasingly connected city that is fully accessible only to a portion of the population. By gaining a better understanding of this urban brand, we hope to contribute to the development of strategies and concepts that promote equitable access to technology while preventing gentrification, segregation, and selective migration.
Case studies: Hybrid towers; Innovation districts; Zukunftsorte
Temporary and Tactical Urbanism as 21st Century Planning Trends: Berlin + Rio
2020-2022 Center for Metropolitan Studies – TU Berlin
Funding: Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung & CAPES (Brazilian Ministry of Education)
For the past two decades, the concepts of temporary and tactical urbanism have become increasingly popular in the field of Urban Planning in Europe. City managers, architects and land developers alike have successfully used short-term and interim uses of space as tools to renew derelict sites, bypass State bureaucracy, and increase popular participation in the decision-making processes of cities. Several publications perceive Berlin as a pioneer of this approach, especially in regards to temporary spaces with a cultural or artistic character. They consider improvised cultural centers, seasonal beach bars and pop-up markets as some of the German capital’s best-practice examples, encouraging their replication in other cities.
However, what these recent works often fail to take into consideration is the fact that temporary cultural spaces can also lead to negative consequences. When incorporated into broader urban branding and placemaking schemes, they contribute to real estate speculation, gentrification, and even spatial segregation. Berlin’s overwhelming rise in rent prices and the eviction of historic squats in the 2010s are evidence of the social setbacks of such a trend. In fact, they lead to the question of how the recent spread of temporary urbanism as an international trend could affect cities of the Global South, which already face severe inequality problems. The research aims to investigate and understand the effects and risks of using temporary spaces as tools within the urban policies of uneven cities. It proposes a unique and original comparative study between Berlin and Rio de Janeiro.
Case studies: A-Fence; Am Tacheles; Insel Weissensee; The Shelf/The Grid; Z/KU
Temporary Uses of Space through Culture in Rio de Janeiro
2015-2019 Prourb – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Funding: Rio de Janeiro Research Foundation (Faperj)
This research examined how spontaneous cultural actions in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and peripheral neighborhoods reveal the REAL creative capacity of populations living in contexts of urban, social, and economic deprivation. Focusing on grassroots temporary and improvised uses of space—such as rooftop theater performances, music events under viaducts, mobile bookstores, and open-air film screenings—the project investigates how art and culture activate neglected or “dormant” urban spaces. These temporary practices foster new social relations, alternative micro-economies, and forms of collective organization, often in the absence of public policies. The research argues that such cultural appropriations enable marginalized communities to claim their right to the city, generating new forms of sociability, livelihood, and democratic participation in an insurgent and insubordinate manner.
Methodologically, the study is grounded in long-term observation and ethnography, emphasizing the perspectives and agency of local cultural producers who initiate and sustain these practices, often without awakening the interest of real estate developers or speculators. By mapping and comparing different cases across the city, the research highlights how ephemeral and mobile cultural actions challenge conventional notions of cultural infrastructure, permanence, and planning. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on informality and urban creativity beyond neoliberal urbanism or discourses of tactical best practices originated in European and North American contexts
Case studies: Cine Taquara; Realengo Flyover Space; Sitiê Park
From the Capital of Culture to the Creative City: Berlin + Rio
2010-2015 Prourb – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Funding: Brazilian Ministries of Technology (CNPq) and Education (CAPES)
This research analyzes the transformation of the concept of culture from a symbolic and institutional “capital/city of culture” to a strategic driver of the contemporary “creative city,” through a comparative study of Berlin and Rio de Janeiro. Focusing on urban policies, cultural planning, and large-scale regeneration processes, the project investigates how culture has been mobilized as an economic, political, and spatial resource in both cities. By examining initiatives linked to creativity, innovation, and cultural production, the study reveals how global models of the creative city are locally adapted, contested, and reinterpreted within distinct historical, social, and urban contexts.
The research further explores the tensions between culture as a tool for inclusion and as an instrument of market-oriented urban development. In Berlin and Rio, cultural strategies have contributed to urban renewal, international branding, and new creative economies, while also generating processes of exclusion, gentrification, and spatial inequality. By comparing these two cities, the project highlights the contradictions inherent in creative city paradigms and questions who ultimately benefits from culture-led urban development, offering a critical perspective on the role of culture in shaping contemporary urban life.
Case studies: Kunsthaus Tacheles; MediaSpree; Street artists (buskers); Rio de Janeiro’s Porto Maravilha and Creative District
▲ Home 