Modern Copacabana was founded at the time of the construction of the Copacabana Palace in 1923. The emergence of the Palace, with its casino and theater where stars such as Mistinguett and Grace Moore, the “nightingale of Hollywood,” graced the stage in the 1930s and 1940s, transformed the area that also benefited from the construction of an access tunnel during the same period. Over the course of three decades, this quiet seaside suburb became a modern neighborhood based on a template of ten-story buildings on an urban grid plan inspired by Haussmann. But it also had to adapt to the curves and particular topography of the bay, which in the end is a little piece of marshland stuck between gigantic rocks and the sea. The urban inspiration at the outset was Paris, with pockets of buildings stuck to each other with inner courtyards. The “Beaux-Arts” style was used until the 1940s, and then a more vertical style was adopted, a resolutely “American” modern style. Even today, Copacabana has the best infrastructure in the city.
Organic development
Copacabana reached its first zenith in the 1950s: it was the chic quarter with beautiful shops and a bohemian feel, and, at the end of the decade, the birthplace of the bossa nova in the bars around the Avenue Nossa Senhora de Copacabana which was the main commercial artery of the neighborhood. The first shopping center on the continent was also built there, designed by Henrique Mindlin in 1953 and inaugurated in 1960. Mindlin had worked with Affonso Reidy on the Museum of Modern Art in Rio. Many songs, movies, and literary works found their inspiration in Copacabana at the time, and it became one of the most famous places in the world.
Urban microcosm
Copacabana is now a city-neighborhood or city-district containing everything a city can offer, though on its own scale. There is even a “nature reserve.” With its estimated population of between 150,000 and 200,000 inhabitants, to which one can add over 10,000 tourists staying in hotels and other accommodation, Copacabana can provide everything that an individual needs from the moment of their birth in one of its hospitals. They may attend one of the many schools in the area, then go to college or take a technical course, work in one of the countless companies located in Copacabana, enjoy their retirement at the beach before taking advantage of funeral services where residents are buried in the cemetery on the other side of the tunnel, in the adjoining district of Botafogo.
At this very moment Copacabana continues to evolve, driven by the recent prosperity of the country and of the city itself, which has caused a sharp increase in the value of real estate, but also because of generational renewal due to the gradual departure of older residents. How will these organic systems, which were created over decades, change in the face of this new situation? What other systems will evolve? The answers remain as elusive as ever. Somewhere between the Generic City of Rem Koolhaas and its antithesis, Copacabana continues to exist in a dynamic and unpredictable complexity, linked to the specifics of the territory, a unique environment and one that has been relatively unaffected by globalization.
Figure 2, Detail of Copacabana. A portion of the area which shows the diversity and relationship between formal and informal activities, but also the central role of the beach and the sea, where there is a concentration of high property value, a population with purchasing power, a large number of hotels, and a strong presence of the sex trade on the streets and around the hotels. Apartment buildings often contain places of prostitution. Temples and other places related to religion intermingle with stores, offices, and residential buildings. Commerce has moved away from the coast in search of more reasonable rent.
Figure 3, in addition, a view showing the nomadic and partly informal economic activity on the streets of Copacabana, with a clear distinction of territory between traders. A part of public space is occupied by the “camelôs,” street vendors equipped with a system of temporary stands for product display, by craftsmen who repair wicker chairs or kitchen pots and pans. Some older activities, like the upholsterers, have “fixed” spaces where they can always be found on any given day. Doormen let them store their tools, materials, or chairs in the surrounding buildings. Why some street traders are prosecuted by the police, while others are not, is unclear. It is probably based on commercial relations with the local police officer or municipal authority of the moment.
The vertical structure of the city follows the dynamics of its horizontal space. Copacabana welcomed the first shopping centers on the South American continent as early as the 1950s, and these spaces have undergone an evolution that reflects the economic decline of the neighborhood and its abandonment by the government. The Shopping Cidade Copacabana mall, as its name suggests, is a vertical city. The project includes several floors of residential apartments, three floors of retail, and a pedestrian walkway between Figueiredo Magalhães and Siqueira Campos, two major arteries of the neighborhood. Over time, this “junkspace” has been fully integrated within its environment, without any plan or project manager. The lack of institutional regulation over several decades has created an organic system based on the immediate needs of the place, which evolves in parallel to that of the surrounding urban development. The range of products and services offered in the commercial sector is huge, with a marked contrast between stores for building materials, medical equipment, vintage vinyl LPs, curios, clothing, art galleries, antique dealers of all kinds, hardware, electronics, cleaning products, restaurants, copy shops, lan-house gaming centers, lights, and installers of blinds, among others.
Informal network
The period of high crime rates in the 1980s until 2000 led to the creation of a system of private security services that is more like a complex organic immune system than a classic security scheme. It is composed of different layers that are not clearly defined, and yet they are fully integrated into the neighborhood today and interact with state security, which relies on this informal network to maintain order.
