The city installed expensive new technology for the event, but a recent study finds the investment might not pay off in the long run.

Brazilians have had a lot to worry about in the lead-up to the Olympic Games this month: a political crisis that led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, a public health crisis in the form of the Zika virus, an increased violent police presence in the streets, and a series of failed public works projects meant to showcase the city’s progress during the games. But there’s a different problem that should be equally worrisome: What’s going to happen to the city when the games have finished and Rio returns to normal life?

Official wisdom has held that the Olympics and other megaevents leave a trail of benefits for host cities in their wake, but urbanists have been increasingly questioning that idea. In Rio’s case (for both the 2012 World Cup and this year’s games), one of the benefits was supposed to be the increased use of technology to manage the city, developed in part to help organize these large events. Rio, it was said, would emerge from the World Cup and the Games at the vanguard of “smart cities” in the region.

But a recent study, published in the Journal of Urban Technology in April, questions the work that Rio has done to transform itself into a smart city. Researchers Christopher Gaffney and Cerianne Robertson analyzed two key parts of Rio’s smart-city infrastructure, both of which form part of the legacy of these megaevents: the Integrated Command and Control Center (CICC) and the Rio Operations Center (COR), which cost the city a combined $40 million.

Smarter than Smart: Rio de Janeiro's Flawed Emergence as a Smart City

Christopher Gaffney & Cerianne Robertson
Page 1-18 | Published online: 29 Apr 2016

“Smart cities” grew out of the realization that North American models of suburban development and central business district decline needed to be challenged with new paradigms. This movement began in the 1990s with ideas centered on smart growth and new urbanism. While initially restricted to small, wealthy cities, the ideas that emerged during this period combined with a vertiginous growth in information technologies to create software-driven urban managerial tools for major cities. The increasing “technologization” of urban systems that automatically replicate spatial dynamics has been on the agenda of urban scholars for some time. However, the relatively new paradigms of “whole system” implementation in large urban centers has not been the subject of robust critical engagement. The aim of this paper is to examine critically the implementation and functioning of two “smart cities” systems in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as part of the city's broader preparations for hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

Keywords: smart citiesurban systemsRio de JaneiroWorld CupOlympics

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2015.1102423