Ecolimits in Rio de Janeiro

The management of extensive urban growth has historically been the subject of numerous government interventions that have been translated into urban policy instruments. In some cases, these instruments have taken the form of physical boundaries, reinforcing or creating differentiations inside and outside the city. Throughout the 2000s, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the notion of ecolimits was used at various times as an instrument for managing urban growth within the city. These were physical delimiters that should be located in the contact between favelas and environmental preservation areas. From a geographical point of view, it is interesting to investigate how these boundaries are produced, materially and symbolically, and what spatial categories are mobilized in policies to contain urban growth and how their interfaces are constructed. Analyzed as a process, the ecolimits policy mobilizes various spatial categories according to the different agents, documents and moments considered here and is constituted as a device for making and unmaking interfaces.