Neo-liberal authoritarian urbanism: the dominant contemporary patterns of urban spatial production in Istanbul and Sao Paulo

Abstract

This article analyses the relations between the rise of authoritarianism and urban development in neoliberal capitalism, based on case studies in Istanbul and Sao Paulo, employing the approach of comparative urbanism. We present the concept of Neo-Liberal Authoritarian Urbanism (NAU), to discuss the accentuation of coercion and loss of social legitimacy in urban politics in the post-2008 crisis context. In both cities, there is a violent steering of urbanistic projects that involve State-finance-real estate market coalitions, and result in socio-territorial exclusion and private appropriation of land as a financial asset. The accumulation by dispossession characteristic of neoliberal urbanism is even more accentuated, with a multi-scalar dimension, in which the connections between local private interests and the globalized reproduction of capital advance.