A gondola to the favelas

By Jen Cutts - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 0 Comments

Rio de Janeiro is lifting up its poor—literally

Buda Mendes/GETTY IMAGES

Rio de Janeiro is lifting up its poor—literally. A new 3.4-km gondola line, much like those used at ski resorts, will soon carry residents high above their homes in the Complexo do Alemão, a group of shantytowns, or favelas, packed onto a hillside in the city’s north. The neighbourhood’s passages are too narrow and winding for buses, so getting in and out of the area has meant a long, rambling walk. When the line opens in the next few weeks, users will sail through six stations in 16 minutes, free of charge.

The $74-million project is part of a larger investment in public works initiatives by Brazil’s government ahead of Rio’s hosting of the 2016 Olympics. Jorge Mario Jáuregui, the line’s architect, says it creates a tangible and symbolic connection between the favelas and the rest of Rio, making “the informal city part of the formal city.” While residents welcome the upgrade, says Patricia Maresch, a documentary filmmaker who works in the area, some feel the money might have been better spent. “It looks good, it’s technologically inventive,” she says, “but it doesn’t really help. You can get your kids to school quicker, but it’s still a bad school.”

Target: Chicago

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 5 Comments

Conservative pundits have a real hate on for the Windy City

Move over, San Francisco, there’s a new town for conservatives to hate: Chicago. President Obama’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get the 2016 Olympics for his hometown has caused an explosion of anti-Chicago commentary from U.S. conservatives, while John Boehner, the leader of the Republicans in Congress, played to his base by saying that Obama seemed to be forgetting that “he’s the President of the United States, not the mayor of Chicago.” Conservatives still find time to attack Hollywood for defending Roman Polanski, or New York for just being New York, but their heart isn’t in it these days. The new enemy is Chicago, which, as Fox News’s Sean Hannity put it, may not be “a city where we want the Olympics taking place.”

These pundits weren’t just arguing that, as Michelle Malkin said on Fox News, Obama’s quest for the Olympics was “all about paying back” his Chicago “cronies.” They argued that the city itself is the violent epitome of liberalism gone wrong. A typical headline on Matt Drudge’s popular conservative website read “CHICAGOLAND: Another boy critically beaten: ‘Blood all over street.’ ” Malkin posted a video of a gang war among mostly African-American teenagers in Chicago, and warned that “Community organizing has not stopped Chicago’s teen violence epidemic. The Olympics will not solve this long-festering problem, either.” The message is that Democratic liberal politics have turned Chicago into hell on earth. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Fred Siegel summed up the current view of Chicago when he described it as a “mix of black-nationalist, gentry-liberal, machine- and mob-connected politics.” Continue…