Where were the favelas in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games maps?
At first glance, the illustration reveals an accumulation of wicked urban problems (WUP’s), from fragmented mobility to precarious housing.
The spatial inequality of the city depicted in this illustration is highly visible.
However, this inequality is not always so apparent as seen by the decision of the City of Rio de Janeiro to exclude or replace favelas with open green spaces in the official tourist and Olympic maps for the 2016 Games, masking deep social and spatial divides and providing a concrete example of how urban challenges can be highly visible in some contexts and deliberately hidden in others.
Understanding cities, therefore, requires looking beyond what is shown and questioning what is left out.
