Formação, declínio e inflexão: reflexões sobre a centralidade da cidade do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

In this work, it argues that the crisis of the city of Rio de Janeiro was characterized, besides the verified loss of their participation in the Brazilian economy, by the loss of its political and economic centrality. Rio de Janeiro was the first large urban-cosmopolitan center of the country. Throughout the first half of the XX century, however, the performance of the Sao Paulo economy fostered the emergence of an competitor urban center. With the transfer of the federal capital to Brasília, in the 1960s and 1970s, changed the compared competitive advantage between the two largest cities, retracting Rio economy with respect to São Paulo economy. Thus, agglomeration economies favored a vicious circle of deflation of the core activities of Rio de Janeiro. Qualitative research based on interviews reveal the importance of these factors in the decision of firms to leave the city, especially between the 1980s and 1990s. Currently, a series of events seems to promote a tipping point in the performance of Rio de Janeiro state economy. This new scenario may favor the recovery of the centrality of the city, although, until recently, with ambiguous results.