Cultural and Creative Glory: The Samba Circle Circuit at the Glória Fair and Its Territorial Development PotentialAbstract
This article analyzes the development potential of the Glória neighborhood (RJ) as a cultural and creative territory, drawing on the articulations between City Hall and cultural agents, particularly those active in the samba circle circuit of the Glória Fair. This is a qualitative research study that included a literature review, documentary research, and interviews with leaders of Glória's samba circles and with representatives from City Hall. The research findings highlight the perception of the Glória neighborhood as cultural heritage and a creative force, although its strengthening as a territory demands a more sophisticated, systematized, and integrated system of political articulation than currently exists, aimed at building processes of collective reflection and governance that can materialize into broader development projects that generate quality of life and opportunities for access to culture, leisure, and the generation of work and income.
Keywords:
Glória; cultural and creative territory; samba circles; Glória Fair; local development
Resumo
Este artigo analisa o potencial de desenvolvimento do bairro da Glória (RJ) como território cultural e criativo, a partir das articulações entre Prefeitura e agentes culturais, em particular aqueles atuantes no circuito de rodas de samba da Feira da Glória. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa que contou com levantamento bibliográfico, levantamento documental e entrevistas com lideranças de rodas de samba da Glória e com representantes da Prefeitura. Os resultados da pesquisa evidenciam a percepção do bairro da Glória como patrimônio cultural e potência criativa, embora seu fortalecimento como território demande um sistema de articulação política mais sofisticado, sistematizado e integrado em comparação ao que existe hoje, no sentido de construção de processos de reflexão coletiva e de governança que se concretizem em projetos mais amplos de desenvolvimento, geradores de qualidade de vida e de oportunidades de acesso à cultura, ao lazer e à geração de trabalho e renda.
Palavras-chave:
Glória; território cultural e criativo; rodas de samba; Feira da Glória; desenvolvimento local
Introduction
An important neighborhood in the history of Rio de Janeiro and a transition zone between the city's Downtown and its South Zone, Glória has been the stage for recent urban transformations that have been reshaping its territory. In addition to hosting a vibrant circuit of samba circles that take place in its public spaces on weekends, the neighborhood has received public investment – such as the Dias de Glória Program1 – and private investment – such as new residential real estate developments and the establishment of facilities belonging to a major hospital network and to a higher education institution. Nevertheless, these transformations are not without conflict, and not all the social actors present in the territory are always involved – or involved in an adequate and effective manner – in the discussions that guide the transformations which, despite this, signal the neighborhood's cultural and creative potential.
The guiding research question can be stated as follows: how do the articulations between the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro and the cultural agents and creative entrepreneurs active in the neighborhood enhance the development of Glória as a cultural and creative territory in the city of Rio de Janeiro? The central hypothesis is that these articulations, especially on the part of City Hall, have occurred in an ad hoc manner and in reaction to specific demands from cultural agents and creative entrepreneurs.
The aim of this article is, therefore, to analyze the neighborhood of Glória with respect to its potential for development as a cultural and creative territory, based on the articulations between the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro and the neighborhood's cultural agents and creative entrepreneurs, in particular those active in the samba circle circuit of the Glória Fair. For this purpose, a qualitative research was conducted that included: (a) a literature review; (b) documentary research on the neighborhood of Glória and the samba circles of Rio de Janeiro; (c) semi-open interviews with a semi-structured question guide (Duarte, 2006) with leaders of Glória's samba circles and with representatives of the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro. The interpretive analysis (Duarte, 2006) of the interviews with representatives of the samba circles and of the municipal public authority allowed a deeper identification and examination of the artistic, social, economic, political, and governance aspects that involve the cultural and creative dynamics of the territory.
The article is structured in five sections, in addition to this introduction. Cities, creative territories, and governance presents the theoretical lenses of the research, in which the contributions of some reference authors on the debate about cities and territories stand out, such as Harvey (2014) and Storper (2013), on creative cities, with emphasis on Landry (2008), the seminal author of the concept, and on Vivant (2012), and, on the topic of territorial governance, authors such as Börzel (2008) and Delamaza (2016), among others. Next, the section Methodological pathway describes the methods and techniques of data collection and analysis. In Analysis: Glória as a historical, cultural, and creative territory, an overview is presented of the history of the neighborhood, which possesses important listed assets of the tangible heritage of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Aspects related to the neighborhood's intangible heritage are also presented, with emphasis on the samba circles and their revival in the post-pandemic period within the context of the neighborhood's revitalization project. The section concludes with the analysis of the presence and the role of the municipal public authority in the researched territory. Discussion: Glória in resurgence brings reflections on the aspects analyzed from the perspective of the creative economy, notably the ideas of sectors, clusters, and creative territories. In the Final considerations, an effort is made to highlight the creative power for the development of Glória.
Cities, creative territories, and governance
The city, from Harvey's perspective (2024, p. 134), is "the place where people of all kinds and classes mingle, however reluctantly and conflictually, to produce a common life, albeit perpetually mutable and transitory." The author defends the right to the city, arguing that it is much more than a right of individual access to the resources it embodies; it is a right to change and reinvent the city according to the way each citizen interacts with, consumes, and experiences the city itself. Furthermore, it is a right that is more collective than individual, since reinventing the city inevitably depends on the exercise of a collective sort of power over the urbanization process. From this process, a collective territory is born where people of all kinds and classes mingle, albeit in a conflictual manner, to produce a common life, though often ephemeral and transitory. The commonality of this life has long been an object of analysis by urban planners, sociologists, and anthropologists, in addition to being a frequent theme in a vast range of texts and representations that attempt to grasp the character of this urban life and its deeper meaning.
The city, as a potential creative territory, has been an object of debate and reflection in recent decades. Creativity, conceived as a vector of territorial development, extends beyond its capacity for symbolic-cultural production, also impacting social, economic, environmental, and governance dynamics and processes. In this sense, a developed and self-sustainable city is a city with a population capable of learning, adapting, and innovating in the face of its vicissitudes and growth opportunities, grounded in its symbolic-aesthetic expression and in the development of cultural and creative sectors that generate opportunities for work, income, and new businesses, through the strengthening of its identities and cultural manifestations. The creative city is, therefore, a city with a culture oriented toward imagination and participation; it is a city that generates wealth and is capable of attracting and retaining creative talent, expanding its potential for cultural and economic development (Reis, 2011).
From this perspective, Evans, Gertler, Tesolin, and Weinstock (2006) argue that a creative city depends on investment in five fundamental dimensions that take into account aspects related to: the education of people; the issues associated with strengthening and fostering business innovation; the creation and expansion of the supply of environments and spaces favorable to the development of creative activities; a vision that promotes both multilevel articulations (institutional and political) and multisectoral ones; and specific aspects oriented toward an efficient and agile infrastructure that promotes good connectivity among the community, entrepreneurs, and the institutional and business actors involved.
The concept of the creative city, problematized by Vivant (2012, p. 23), despite the criticisms that may be made, updates the idea of the "city as an emancipatory entity, which facilitates the expression of singularities, the assertion and manifestation of differences and diversity." This concept seems to bring at its core the revaluation of the qualities of urban space from a symbolic and economic standpoint, and, in the context of contemporary urban transformations, the author highlights the processes of revaluation of neighborhoods that over time were perceived as degraded, devalued, and marginal/marginalized. The valorization of urban spaces attracts new developments, professionals with higher education, people with access to high-level technological performance and with empathy toward diversity, as well as artistic-cultural movements2. Storper (2013), in turn, observes the importance of the concentration of specialist groups in a single region, building informal bridges within the workforce, which can contribute to collective bargaining with suppliers and to actions before public bodies.
As a point of attention, Seldin (2016) highlights urban regeneration as a central investment of the so-called "creative cities," while also considering its positive and negative impacts. If, on the one hand, the restoration, requalification, and occupation of abandoned and degraded urban spaces by facilities and professionals from the cultural and creative field have emerged as processes that generate new economic-cultural dynamics, expanding the city's visibility, attracting investors, and boosting tourist flows; on the other, these same dynamics have generated processes of gentrification and of increasing inequality in the access and obtaining of benefits by local populations. Cases of projects disconnected from the reality of local communities are frequent and, consequently, unsustainable in the medium and long term (Seldin, 2016). Historically, the implementation of projects for the requalification of territories, within a ”top-down” logic, reinforces the deepening of inequalities in the territories.
Overcoming this top-down logic requires a perspective that incorporates “a more general reflection on the contemporary urban phenomenon” (Velho, 1999, p. 10) and that ”thinks about cities and their territorial dimensions” (Frúgoli, Andrade, & Peixoto, 2006, p. 11). In this sense, the subjects who populate urban spaces not only inhabit and experience the city but also construct and express imaginaries that “must be understood based on their particular socio-historical frameworks” (Velho, 1999, p, p. 10). Such imaginaries reveal forms of sharing and collaboration among the actors, indicating possible paths toward more inclusive forms of production and management of the territory.
The debate on public policy is broadened through the understanding of new territorialities and participatory processes that generate effective and legitimate changes and transformations. In this way, the State emerges as a mediator of the relationships and flows established among people, the sphere of the common, and economic activities (Thayer & Delamaza, 2016). Recognizing the networks of actors, the intensity of the relationships among them, and the systematics necessary to articulate these relationships is fundamental to expanding participatory processes that generate co-responsibility in territorial development. More than a regulator of social and economic activities, the State presents itself, or should present itself, as the main investor and promoter of an ambiance favorable to occupation processes and of an infrastructure favorable to business development.
However, it is important to understand that there is a greater subjective complexity in the field of territory, which is established according to multiple criteria and social categories. Thus, social subjects are configured on the basis of a symbolic-cultural system connected to issues of belonging, gender, situations of social risk, and ideological and political frames of reference. Social subjects and their groupings end up defining territories that do not necessarily correspond to or are restricted to a predefined political-administrative geography. Territories are, therefore, spaces defined by the subjectivities and singularities of the subjects who inhabit and act within them, in which a governance system that promotes legitimacy and ensures that the region's real needs are heard becomes necessary (Thayer & Delamaza, 2016).
Democratic and transparent governance emerges as a complex, multilevel exercise of cooperation and coordination that demands maturity and commitment from those involved, in addition to the establishment of bottom-up participation mechanisms. It is also a proposal for political decentralization, in which citizenly participation is incorporated into territorial management.
The institutionalization of participatory processes is essential to decentralize public policies and requires attention to three fundamental questions: the identity of participants (actors involved in a policy or a program), the mechanisms through which participation is concretely realized, and whether it is characterized as informative, consultative, or binding (consequences of the process) (Delamaza, 2016).
Nevertheless, care must be taken to ensure that the institutionalization of these processes is neither paralyzing nor creates unnecessary bureaucracies. If, on the one hand, the existence of democratic institutions ensures the legitimation of decision-making and the maintenance of policies debated and appropriated by society, on the other hand, the multiple stages and layers of decision may cause inefficiency and, in some cases, transaction costs that hinder the timely and appropriate solution of problems that demand agility (Gomide & Pires, 2014).
Thus, attention turns to the State's execution capacity, taking into account its structures and operating dynamics, from legal-institutional, technical, and bureaucratic dimensions, within a political and social context permeated by power and interest struggles and by conflicts and tensions intensified by processes of democratic participation (Saravia, 2016).
In this discussion, the notion of embedded autonomy gains relevance owing to the need to ensure that the state bureaucracy does not submit to private interests, placing them above public interests. Although public-private partnerships must be considered within the scope of territorial development, relations with the private sectors should always be built in the direction of the collective and of development, without ever allowing the State to be captured (Gomide, 2016).
The creation of channels of relationship with civil society, through the institutionalization of its representation within the state apparatus or the institutionalization of direct channels for the population, is fundamental. However, from the perspective of policy formulation and execution, for the State to achieve its objectives, it is necessary to go further, articulating institutional arrangements that incorporate multiple actors. These arrangements correspond to governance structures that mobilize the actors related to a given policy through a combination of incentives and controls. They flourish in environments characterized “by the existence of representative, participatory, and control institutions (social, bureaucratic, and judicial)” (Gomide & Pires, 2014, p. 21), which come together in the pursuit of common objectives mediated by the political capacities of the State.
Public administration must be guided by network-based management, activated and connected to representations of interests that directly interfere in the process of formulating public policies (Lobato, 2006). These representations and their dynamics are understood through the identification of groups that, beyond the traditional ones (political parties, associations, unions, among others), encompass the informal ones, often constituted and legitimized by civil society itself (for example, communities and collectives) or by companies and corporations that see their demands denied or unmet by the State. The fragmentation of interests and requests arising from this multiplicity of groups makes the (shared) process of policy formulation more complex, owing to structural, administrative, and resource limitations. Thus, more than the fulfillment of private interests, policies should be formulated to serve public interests that generate co-responsibility.
The network, according to Saravia (2002), is thus an enhancer of results from the moment it integrates common efforts and interests. It expands the production of knowledge through the sharing of information, experiences, and projects. In this way, networks emerge as potential partners in the effectiveness of public policies, and it is up to the public authority to recognize their role in the formulation and implementation of these policies, defining channels of dialogue and systematic forms of participation beyond those established informally.
In this sense, according to the Policy Network Interests School (Börzel, 2008, p. 218), “policy networks” are considered tools to “examine the institutionalized exchange relations between the State and civil society organizations... while considering sectoral and sub-sectoral differences” (Börzel, 2008, p. 230) on the basis of interests and resources established between the parties. From this perspective, the participation of society therefore allows the sharing and the increase of the capillarity of governmental action, thus generating greater effectiveness in meeting society's real needs.
Methodological pathway
The research conducted adopted a qualitative and exploratory approach (Gil, 2008). In a first stage, a literature review and documentary research were carried out and, subsequently, semi-open interviews were conducted.
The literature review enabled the construction of the study's theoretical framework on cities, territories, and governance. In turn, through documentary research – conducted primarily on websites of public bodies and organizations, such as the Rio de Janeiro City Hall, the National Archive, and the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN), but also on websites of private organizations, such as Ó Gloria! and Outeiro da Glória – the description and analyses of the neighborhood of Glória and Rio de Janeiro's samba circles took shape.
In order to identify and examine more deeply the artistic, social, economic, political, and governance aspects that involve the cultural and creative dynamics of the territory of Glória, semi-open in-depth interviews were conducted, using semi-structured guides (Duarte, 2006), with leaders of samba circles in Glória and with representatives of the Rio de Janeiro City Hall. According to Duarte (2006), the in-depth individual interview allows for the exploration of the observation of informants' perceptions and experiences. Among the main qualities of this type of interview, the author highlights the flexibility in exploration and the fact that it allows the interviewer to conduct it more freely, while at the same time allowing the informant to define the terms of the answers. Its purpose lies in understanding a situation or the structure of a problem, and its aim is for quality, intensity, and layers of information.
In this study, the selection of interviewees was made by convenience; that is, it was based on the availability of the professionals who were contacted. The interviews with the leaders – three producers and one artist – of four samba circles based at the Glória Fair – Gloriosa, Gastrosamba, Roda Ed Samba, and Pagode do Time de Crioulo – were given in the form of recorded testimonies guided by the questions of the interview script, which allowed the interviewees to report their experiences and perceptions of the events that followed the official announcement of the covid-19 pandemic and extended until the resumption of cultural activities after the health crisis. Two representatives of the municipal public authority who held positions linked to Local Executive Management units (GEL) of the city of Rio de Janeiro were also interviewed. All the interviews, with representatives of the samba circles and of the municipal public authority, were transcribed and analyzed through interpretive analysis (Duarte, 2006). It should be noted that the names of the interviewees were preserved, ensuring their anonymity.
Analysis: Glória as a historical, cultural, and creative territory
The historic neighborhood of Glória is located in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro, between Flamengo, Catete, Lapa, and Centro. It is characterized by an architectural ensemble dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Outeiro da Glória, n.d.), in addition to having been the stage of great battles, as early as the sixteenth century, between Indigenous peoples and the Portuguese. According to the historian Paulo Knauss (Ó Glória!, n.d.)3, the history of Rio de Janeiro and the constitution of Brazil pass through Glória. In January 1567, the Portuguese fleet led by Mem de Sá arrived at Guanabara Bay to reinforce the Portuguese armada (Arquivo Nacional, 2023), led by his nephew Estácio de Sá, in the offensive against the Tamoios, led by Uruçumirim, located in what is now Morro da Glória.
Indigenous resistance to the Portuguese, with the support of some French allies, also took place in what is now Ilha do Governador and along the coast of the present-day municipality of São Gonçalo. The Tamoios resisted in Glória for a few days, but were defeated, with most of the group killed in combat. The defeat also gradually advanced to the other points of resistance (Belchior, 2008; Doria, 2012; Quintiliano, 1965). Today, on Morro da Glória, stands the Igreja Nossa Senhora da Glória do Outeiro, built in 1739, a landmark of the neighborhood.
There are other historical landmarks of the neighborhood worth highlighting. The country's first recorded sanitation initiative took place in Glória, undertaken by the then governor Estácio de Sá, in 1561 (Díaz & Nunes, 2020). Moving forward in time, in the twentieth century, Praça Paris was built, originating from a renovation of Rio de Janeiro's historic center, inspired by the French model of urbanization and carried out by the then mayor Pereira Passos. The neighborhood of Glória retains aristocratic features, having as its neighbor the Museu da República, housed in the Palácio do Catete, former residence of aristocrats and, with the Proclamation of the Republic, seat of the federal government of what was then called the United States of Brazil (Paes, 2019). It was in the neighborhood of Glória that, in 1985, the first Integrated Center for Public Education (CIEP), popularly known as “Brizolão,” was inaugurated, conceived by the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro and designed by Oscar Niemeyer with the purpose of offering full-time education to students in the public school system.
Glória therefore holds important chapters of the country's history, not only because of the historical, political, and social events that took place there, but also because of the buildings listed as tangible heritage (Fajardo, 2014), besides being marked today by the presence of various cultural movements.
The neighborhood comprises an architectural ensemble that includes eighteen properties listed as cultural heritage by federal, state, and/or municipal initiative. Glória is among the neighborhoods of the city of Rio de Janeiro with the highest density of listed and preserved properties per square meter (Fajardo, 2014; Ó Glória!, n.d.; Santos, 2018), including parks and gardens.
Illustration of the map of the tangible listed heritage properties of the Glória neighborhood
Even though it is a neighborhood of small territorial dimensions, Glória concentrates a considerable network of commerce and services, as well as institutions important to the city, such as the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) and the Marina da Glória, located in the Parque Brigadeiro Eduardo Gomes, at the Aterro do Flamengo; the Memorial Municipal Getúlio Vargas, in the Praça Luís de Camões; the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM), in the Villa Aymoré4; the Instituto D'Or de Pesquisa e Ensino (IDOR); the Teatro Prudential (Edifício Manchete); among others.
It is in this environment that Glória, beyond its tangible heritage, emerges as a cultural and creative territory also on account of its cultural assets of an intangible nature which, according to IPHAN (n.d.), "concern those practices and domains of social life that are expressed in forms of knowledge, crafts and ways of doing things; celebrations; scenic, plastic, musical, or playful forms of expression; and in places (such as markets, fairs, and sanctuaries that host collective cultural practices)." The neighborhood records the second largest concentration of samba circles in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro (Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, 2022). There are ten in all, four of them at the Glória Fair. The samba circles, the fruit of the mobilization of artists and cultural movements of the neighborhood, represent a significant intangible heritage and function as a space that fosters the sharing of experiences, sociability, and existential and economic exchanges. Samba, in Rio de Janeiro, was recognized as an intangible cultural asset inscribed in the Registry Book of Forms of Expression on November 29, 2007, and is a structuring element in the construction of the city's identity and cultural tradition (IPHAN, 2014).
The socioeconomic activity in the neighborhood, prompted by the samba circles that take place on Sundays at the Glória Fair, has brought about changes in the territory. Until recently, the fair was regarded as just another urban fair. Following Rio Decree No. 41036 of 2015, which provides for the Rede Carioca de Rodas de Samba Cultural Development Program, and Decree No. 43219 of 2017, which establishes the program Sistema Rio Ainda Mais Fácil Eventos (RIAMFE), aimed at reducing the bureaucratic requirements for holding samba circle events in public spaces, the Glória Fair began to bring together new economic agents, such as craft and gastronomy entrepreneurs, and even sellers of used goods, who not infrequently come from thrift shops and antique dealers.
With the resumption of the fair in the post-pandemic period, there was a 50% increase in the number of stalls, which made it more diverse and distinctive. It is today considered the largest open-air market in Rio de Janeiro (Magalhães, 2023), located along Avenida Augusto Severo, in the stretch between Praça Nossa Senhora da Glória, Rua Morais e Vale, parallel to the main avenue, and Rua Joaquim Silva, flanked by Praça Paris. It is within this cultural melting pot that samba circles emerge, taking place in the afternoon and evening at Largo da Glória, alongside the fair. In this square, new entrepreneurs from the field of the creative economy have come to surround these circles, in a space called "Feira do Samba," identified in Figure 2 below as Feira Gastronômica da Glória. These are entrepreneurs in the gastronomy sector, focused on popular cuisine, artisanal beverages, fashion, and handicrafts, who are part of an initiative separate from the open-air market that takes place in the same setting. Nevertheless, the Glória Open-Air Market can be seen as fostering an action complementary to the Feira do Samba and the circles, drawing visitors to this cultural movement and to the neighborhood.
Glória is, therefore, a territory that has been demonstrating its artistic and cultural vitality, despite decades of relative neglect regarding the attention of the public authority and a certain invisibility as an attractive place for residence and leisure among residents of other neighborhoods in the city. It is in this sense that, within a temporal scope encompassing the final months of 2021 through the middle of 2023, we sought to analyze some transformations that occurred—and that, being a process, continue to occur—in Glória.
With the improvement of the covid-19 epidemiological situation in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in the final months of 2021 some artistic and cultural activities began to be permitted by municipal and state authorities. In this context of the gradual reopening of cultural events, the samba circles that used to take place in various neighborhoods of the city were able to be held once again. According to one of the producers of a Glória samba circle, October 31, 2021, was the date on which the first samba circle in the south zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro returned to perform in a public square.
Although the reopening and the return of performances were a cause of great joy and celebration for all those connected to the samba circles, the resumption of Glória's circles did not occur without problems and conflicts, as the interviewees emphasized:
So, the reception was very warm. People were very thirsty for culture, for a hug, even without hugging one another, right? Embracing through the gaze and [by] being able to hear music, being able to be there gathered around (Samba circle professional from Glória).
In the specific case of this type of event in the neighborhood, a central problem was reported: the square, occupied before the pandemic by the samba circles, was taken over by other cultural groups and by vendors unrelated to the world of samba. This occupation occurred precisely during the period in which the circles were suspended because of the pandemic. The reclaiming of this space did not occur without conflicts. However, these were gradually eased over time, although some issues are yet to be resolved.
We began to face some difficulties that did not exist before: the number of street vendors, the number of illegal entrepreneurs with food trucks, beverages. The resumption brought these changes for us, the producers, who had to put in place far more security compared with what it was before the pandemic (Glória Samba circle producer 1).
It was not merely a matter of sharing the space of the square that had been occupied by other groups, but also of bearing additional costs—such as security—that arose as a consequence of this new occupation.
We have been suffering a great deal. It drove up costs considerably, because we rent barriers, things that were not necessary in the past. More security. The cost of producing the circle became more expensive after the return from the pandemic. Because the space was empty, because we could not hold events. There is another crowd that did not care at all about the problem the world was going through at that moment and occupied the place. Now, to vacate it, it is very difficult; we have been sharing it with them (Glória Samba circle producer 2).
As can be observed in the excerpts of testimonies below, the circle producers came to identify these new occupants of the square as "clandestine," owing to their having arrived in the space during the period when in-person activities were prohibited. The circles, by contrast, followed the guidelines intended to maintain social distancing and, moreover, had in the past used Praça da Glória with the support of the public authority and in accordance with municipal laws, as one of the producers recalled.
There was an immense difficulty when we thought about coming back. We sought legal means; even we of the [we have omitted the name of the samba circle] adopted the space of the square, where we hold the circle, in an attempt to preserve the place. To achieve this return, we had to share the space with the clandestine fair. Very much against our will. This fair, together with the street vendors, became one more thorn in our side in producing Glória's samba circles (Glória Samba circle producer 2).
We wanted to bring together the people who were in the space, who considered themselves to belong to the space, and we had some conflicts, some even tense negotiations, in order to manage to reclaim the space that was legitimately occupied by us with all the support of the public authority's studies, of City Hall, in short, of all the agencies (Glória Samba circle producer 3 ).
The role of public authorities is regarded by the interviewees as very important for the samba circles of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The circle producers want to be able to organize them – "one of our aspirations is that City Hall and the agencies work so as to let us work in peace, let us hold our events" (Producer 2 of a Glória samba circle) – and they want this cultural manifestation, so closely tied to the way of being and living of the carioca, to be viewed by the public authority in a more serious and professional manner. They long for the circles to be regarded not only as a cultural heritage of the city, but also as an economic activity which, as such, requires public support and incentives.
In my opinion, what should be done in terms of public policy is really the involvement of the municipal and state administrators. Above all the municipality, in protecting the samba circles that take place, including placing the samba circle within the city's own calendar. Support from the Municipal Guard around the event; the Military Police and oversight by the Order Department acting against clandestine vendors. City Hall fulfilling its role in protecting the audience that is [sic] attending the circle, but there is no protection, no presence of the Municipal Guard, no Order Department carrying out oversight regarding clandestine vendors, whether street vendors or businesspeople operating clandestinely in the square (Glória Samba circle producer 1).
From a political standpoint, public policy, I think, is an investment—public policies aimed at the professionalization of the actors involved. I think the sense of improving infrastructure, of improving security and public ordering (Glória Samba circle producer 3).
In summary, the interviewees' perceptions point to an action by the public authority that is reactive to specific demands, without effectively mediating the relations and flows among the territory's agents from the perspective of the occupation of common spaces and the development of their productive activities. This pattern of governmental action stands in opposition to that advocated by Thayer and Delamaza (2016), who defend a model in which the State assumes the role of investor and promoter of an environment favorable to processes of occupation of the territory and of an infrastructure favorable to business development.
Throughout the second half of 2022, a rearrangement of the location of the samba circles was observed, given that revitalization works carried out by City Hall were advancing throughout the previously occupied area, and that the site was acquiring paving and space for exercise equipment and physical activities, as can be verified in Figure 3. For this reason, the samba circles came to occupy the adjacent square, where a monument to Pedro Álvares Cabral is located, reconfiguring the function of this public space, which until then had been practically abandoned.
These works were part of the Dias de Glória Program, launched in March 2022, with the aim of promoting tourism in the neighborhood by revitalizing forty points of tourist interest in the area. With actions distributed across fourteen areas of the neighborhood and led by the Municipal Department of Tourism, the program also relies on the participation of the Municipal Department of Conservation and the South Zone Subprefecture. Notwithstanding its relevance for the neighborhood and the city, once again the action of the public authority in the territory was carried out without listening to or involving the local population.
The samba circles of Glória are neither called upon to participate in nor involved in the territory's governance process. At times, coordination with City Hall occurs in an unsystematic and spontaneous manner, since cultural agents, in order to make their activities feasible, turn directly to public bodies such as the Municipal Department of Public Order (to obtain provisional permits for occupying public space), the Municipal Guard of Rio de Janeiro and the Military Police of the State of Rio de Janeiro (for public security matters), and the Municipal Urban Cleaning Company (Comlurb), to ensure the cleanliness of public space.
Thus, one perceives the absence of a systematic territorial governance that integrates the interests of the various neighborhood actors with the public authority, with regard to the organization of the fair and the samba circles, which runs counter to Lobato's (2006) argument concerning the need for a networked public management for the formulation and implementation of public policies.
In the case of the city of Rio de Janeiro, the model of territorial governance defined and led by City Hall is structured around the division of the city into: Planning Areas (AP) and Administrative Regions (RA), in addition to the existence of subprefectures and the GELs. Table 1 provides a concise description of the distribution of the territories of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
As can be observed, City Hall comprises eight subprefectures, five planning areas, 32 administrative regions, 51 local managements, and 180 neighborhoods.
Glória belongs to the IV Administrative Region (Botafogo), in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro 6which, according to the Social Progress Index (IPS RIO, 2022), has the highest qualitative performance in the city, showing high indices of well-being, opportunities, and basic human needs. In the neighborhood, there is a marked presence of groups originating from the working classes that represent movements related to popular culture, influencing its reconfiguration, especially on Sundays (the day on which the samba circles take place), and the diversification of a space that remains underused during the week.
Although Glória is located in the IV Administrative Region in the Zona Sul, the neighborhood came to be administered by the Subprefecture and by the GEL of Centro and Centro Histórico through Decreto Rio No. 51,939, of January 16, 2023. A representative of this GEL, interviewed during the research, clarifies the change:
It is not the first time that Glória been governed by the GEL Centro; this has already happened in the past. It is worth emphasizing that the neighborhood of Glória continues to belong to the Zona Sul; only its municipal administration becomes the responsibility of the Subprefecture of Centro and, consequently, of the GEL Centro. This decision was made by the mayor because today the neighborhood of Glória shares several problems with Centro (Civil Servant 1 of the Local Executive Management).
It is worth noting that the subprefectures, also known as Special Neighborhood Coordinating Offices, were created within the "scope of the Municipal Public Administration," pursuant to Article 2, item I, of Rio Decree No. 48,610 of March 15, 2021 (Rio de Janeiro [RJ], 2021), with the competence to
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supervise, guide, and coordinate the activities and programs of the Local Executive Managements, created by Decreto Rio 48,451 of January 18, 2021;
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establish mechanisms to democratize public management and strengthen participatory forms that exist at the regional level;
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act as drivers of local development, implementing public policies based on regional vocations and the interests expressed by the population;
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facilitate access and bring transparency to public services, making them closer to citizens,
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carry out other related functions.
The GEL were created in January of the same year through Decreto Rio No. 48,451, of January 18, 2021, taking on "the responsibilities, duties, and rights of the Regional Administrator established" previously by Decreto Rio No. 10,222, of June 21, 1991. In the Integrated Institutional Coding System (SICI)7, the competences of the GEL are defined, of a more operational nature and associated with the coordination and mobilization efforts with the territories and their agents.
However, although the two decrees indicate the jurisdiction of the subprefectures and of the GEL, in addition to the subordinate relationship of the latter to the former, in practice this is not what appears to happen, according to one of the interviewees:
The GEL has come to be a somewhat political actor there in the area, a political actor to bring City Hall closer to the ground. What is the great advantage of the GEL over the subprefect? The subprefect has a broader scope of responsibilities and a huge territory; the GEL is more on the ground, so it can give more focused attention to certain demands of the population, to certain problems. The relationship of the GEL with the Subprefecture is not hierarchical. The GEL are within the Casa Civil, and the subprefect is assigned to the mayor's office. There is no hierarchy between the two and, at times, you may have clashes, some tensions there. So sometimes the GEL is doing one thing, the subprefect another...; sometimes the GEL may have more influence in that region, but the subprefect, as a rule, has more authority. If the GEL asks a body to do something and the subprefect also does, as a rule you will see the subprefect's wishes being met, but neither one nor the other has command over the bodies (Civil Servant 2 of the Local Executive Management).
Both the subprefects and the GEL are appointed positions, therefore both function as political appointments, often being used by City Hall as bargaining chips to politically negotiate with allies in the Municipal Chamber. In July 2021, the mayor created, through Decreto No. 48,610, ten more GEL, totaling 61. It remains to be noted that each Management has four appointed positions within its structure. Thus, one arrives at a total of 244 appointed positions, which guarantees the mayor extensive negotiating power with his allies, who are interested in certain regions of the municipality.
Discussion: Glória in resurgence
It is within this scenario of the neighborhood of Glória, in which samba is the amalgam that brings together other cultural agents, that one perceives what authors such as Vivant (2012) and Storper (2013) assert about cultural sectors bringing together creative processes made possible by geographical proximity and by the interactions among agents, which impact various places and groups, and considering the externalities of agglomeration or creative clustering.
The territory, according to Landry (2008), is constituted and strengthened through the connections established among its different actors, expanding as an environment that generates opportunities for work and income, symbolic-aesthetic expression, and identity building. Thus, it is evident that, through the integration between the samba circle and the fair, there is a decisive contribution to strengthening the neighborhood's cultural and economic movement, with activities that run from morning until night. In addition to music, the samba circles offer the public the sale of beverages and food whose suppliers, for the most part, come from the neighborhood itself, confirming the importance of specialized clusters. Below, in Figure 4, the Gloriosa Roda de Samba.
Some of the musicians and technical staff of the samba circles of Glória live in the region8, contributing a sensitive perspective toward valuing the square where the circles take place, caring for the environment, and generating work and income. An example of this concern occurred on April 17, 2022, when the Gloriosa samba circle was present at the inauguration of the Samba Space Adoption Plaque, a mechanism for safeguarding and protecting this Carioca cultural manifestation in the area.
In this context, it is understood that intangible heritage contributes decisively to promoting the attractiveness of the area, evidencing the strength of the neighborhood's creative economy, a creative territory that mobilizes cultural potentials and economic activities associated with cultural tourism, festivals, traditions, and historical and artistic heritage (Ramos, 2015). This attractiveness has led to a change in socioeconomic practices in the neighborhood, with rising prices of local services and the increased cost of the sale and rental of properties in the area. As Seldin (2016) points out, these transformations may lead to a process of gentrification of the territory.
In light of all the issues analyzed thus far, it can be stated that Glória stands out as a cultural and creative territory whose development potential emerges from the sociabilities and symbolic and economic exchanges woven into its daily life, whether by those who live, work, and/or move through the region. Nevertheless, the structures and dynamics of the territorial governance system are still fragile and unsystematic, with occasional overlaps of functions among the bodies within the public authority's structure and among these bodies in their relations with the other territorial agents. In this sense, the need for better coordination and a better systematic approach to participation and cooperation becomes evident—one that fosters the development of the territory through effective paths and strategies that address the population's demands.
Glória in resurgence, as a result of the sociocultural, economic, and urban changes undergone in recent years, points to a territorial analysis and a discussion that is grounded partly in theoretical reflections already produced on creative territories and partly in an in-depth look at the neighborhood's specific everyday practices, taking into account its ordinary dynamics woven between convergences and conflicts among its various agents. There are no models or frameworks for the enhancement and development of creative territories that can be applied without adjustments or adaptations. Building and coordinating effective, polycentric governance models remains a challenge.
Final considerations: Glória as a territory and creative force for development
Returning to the idea of political network interests (Börzel, 2008), in the case of Glória this perspective means pointing out that the actors involved and the interdependence of all entities would be fundamental not only to implementing the renovation of public facilities and areas in the neighborhood, but also to thinking about the region in a broader way. It is a neighborhood where merchants, service providers, informal vendors, educational institutions, facilities listed as tangible heritage, and a cultural life largely shaped by the occupation of urban public space coexist. At the same time, an increase in people in situations of social vulnerability and in the accumulation of organic waste and recyclable materials in public space is also observed. In this sense, if one of the objectives of the urban interventions underway is to increase the quality of life of the neighborhood for all residents, workers, and visitors, it is necessary for the various social actors to be involved in the actions to improve the territory. The participation of residents and representatives of the economic activities carried out in the neighborhood in the construction of public policies, as well as the creation of processes that generate co-responsibility between the public authority and civil society, for example, could contribute to the development of Glória.
The analysis of the governance structure proposed by City Hall, with the deputy mayor and the GEL assisted by a team, did not reveal the existence of a periodic, continuous systematic approach to engaging with society. Furthermore, weakness was found in the use of official channels to carry out this coordination, as evidenced by Börzel (2008) with regard to the Political Network Interests School and the political influence exerted over public administration. Although the competencies established in the municipal decrees on the functions of the sub-prefectures and the GELs seem clear and effective, in practice we did not find that there is constant and genuinely integrated action among these bodies, either internally or in their relationship with other City Hall agencies called upon due to specific demands. Although the statements of public authority representatives point to expanded listening and prompt responses to the population's requests, the existence of unresolved problems—which could be solved through more effective action by public managers—is confirmed.
In light of the issues previously pointed out, the perception of the neighborhood of Glória as cultural heritage and a creative force is evident, although its strengthening as a territory requires a more sophisticated, systematized, and integrated system of political coordination compared to what exists today. This must occur not only in the sense of identifying demands to be met, but of building processes of collective reflection that go beyond day-to-day issues to take shape in broader development projects that generate quality of life and opportunities for access to culture, leisure, and the generation of work and income, without losing sight of possible gentrification processes. The shift of responsibility for managing Glória from the Sub-prefecture of the South Zone to the Sub-prefecture of the Center9 opens up the possibility of creating and developing cultural circuits integrated with other neighborhoods managed by this Sub-prefecture, which naturally establish a more direct relationship with their surroundings, such as: Lapa, Santa Teresa, Gamboa, and Centro. It is necessary to go beyond the logic of conservation and order, the fulfillment of which still proves fragile, in order to advance toward strategic thinking that fosters concrete changes in the territory, strengthening experiences and economic processes activated by its multiple histories – often invisible to most of the neighborhood's residents and visitors – and cultural expressions, most notably the samba circles, a symbol of resistance and a historical heritage for the city.
This study, based on research about the neighborhood of Glória in Rio de Janeiro, sought to contribute to the field of organizational studies from a territorial perspective, bringing forward an interdisciplinary dialogue that draws on authors who address creative territories, urban issues, and public policies. The limitations of this research lie in its territorial and temporal scope. New studies may advance the analysis of current uses of public spaces and territorial arrangements, which have expanded after the conclusion of this research. Furthermore, it is suggested that quantitative research, conducted on the basis of socioeconomic data from the different actors participating in the Glória Fair and its samba circles, may contribute to the construction of public policies aimed at the neighborhood. Finally, as a possibility for future studies, it is noted that aspects related to class, gender, and race inequalities in the processes of territorial occupation, which are not addressed within the scope of this research, may be investigated.
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Source: Ó Glória! (n.d.)
Source: Prepared by the authors based on Google Maps (Google, 2026)
Source: Dias de Glória: bairro passa por ações de revitalização5 (2022).
Source: photo montage prepared by the authors based on Gloriosa Roda de Samba (n.d.)