Investigating urban elites through fear and security in Porto Alegre

The interest of studying and trying to define elitist groups in different cities derives from their political, economical and socio-cultural power, which might have a strong impact on urban societies and their living environment. Taking from the results of the ongoing EU funded research (REFERENCE REMOVED FOR ANONYMITY) (2014-2017) and from the SNIS funded research (REFERENCE REMOVED FOR ANONYMITY) (2011-2014), the paper contributes to the understanding of the ‘urban geographies of elite reproduction’ through the lens of the emerging ‘culture of fear’ as a fundamental contemporary societal paradigm (Beck 1992, Bauman 2003, Low 2004, Goldstein 2010, Casati 2012). Today, urban elites behaviours, lifestyles, discourses and their spatial organisation are in fact increasingly driven by real or perceived urban insecurity, with direct consequences on the built form and socio-spatial organisation of their cities. As a consequence, understanding the urban models those groups are direct or indirectly proposing and their impact on society, searching for an effective methodology to conduct such investigations is at the core of the the researches discussed here.
With that respect, the paper will examine the cases of Porto Alegre (REFERENCE REMOVED FOR ANONYMITY) and Luanda (REFERENCE REMOVED FOR ANONYMITY) as “second (or third)-tier cities” that represent two different ways in which urban elites and the issue of urban security play a key role in driving urban development. Comparing contemporary elitist living conditions and standards in those two cities seems particularly fruitful to outline parallel trends, such as investments in defensive systems and in exclusive real estate projects, processes of formal-informal occupation and control of public spaces, mechanisms of spatial reshaping, production and reproduction, revealing global tendencies that go far beyond the Global South. Moreover, the comparison obliges to rise a series of key questions on the transnational influence of urban models, on future city references that urban elites are explicitly or implicitly suggesting and on the mechanisms of segregation and exclusion that are being introduced.
The paper will discuss the different ways of defining the urban elites in the specific Brazilian and Angolan contexts (Defining the urban elites); secondly it will consider the advantages of taking the issues of fear and security as fruitful entry points to understand the elites (Investigating urban elites though fear and security); thirdly, the paper will describe the applied similar methodology used in the frame of the two researches (Applied methodology) and it will finally describe some of the obtained results, focussing especially on the emerging behavioural patterns of the so defined urban elites (Emerging urban elites behavioural patterns).