Urbanising rainforests: emergent socioecologies in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Recently included on the UNESCO World Heritage list, the urban forests of Rio de Janeiro are one of the most thorough expressions of the more-than-human character of the so-called ‘cultural landscapes’. Far from pristine nature, Rio’s forests are plant communities that developed on land previously used for agriculture, energy and water supply, and human habitation, among other purposes. Traces of such activities can still be seen in every corner of these forests, currently protected areas. Some of the human marks are very conspicuous and can be noticed by anyone: water tanks, stairways, arches, banana plantations, and the like. But some other traces are so organically integrated in the landscape that only a trained eye can discern them; for example, whole sections of forest dominated by jackfruit, an Asian species, and small plateaus carved into the hillside with a strangely blackened soil. In this article, we investigate the origins of these two kinds of landscape features. Based on primary written sources and iconography, in addition to the relevant historiography, this work of historical reconstruction reveals an inextricable interpenetration between socio-economic and cultural processes — such as cash crop expansion and urban sprawl — on the one hand and bio-ecological processes — such as secondary succession and ecosystem invasion — on the other. In fact, as we argue, both are part of the same moving life-world, a continuous web of more-than-human relationships that generates both city and forest. This socionatural dialectic is responsible for Rio de Janeiro currently being a city full of forests which, if carefully inspected, reveal themselves full of urban history.