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When there's a soccer game in Brazil,
you can hear the chants from the avid fans, even from across the river.
This national obsession recently got an extra boost. In early June,
South America's largest country was chosen to host the 2014 World Cup.
Brazil's 12 host cities are looking to spend billions of dollars for the event.
The government of Porto Alegre, a small city of 1.5 million
in Southern Brazil, is planning a colossal makeover. Fans are excited.
I think that it's an honor for us gauchos, from Southern Brazil,
to bring the Cup to the Beira-Rio Stadium. It pleases us.
On January 1st, the city created the new Secretary of the 2014
World Cup, Secopa. The body has already proposed two-dozen
development projects, including massive renovations at Beira-Rio stadium,
a new soccer stadium for the cross-town rival Gremio,
a metro system, airport renovations, new roads and high-rise complexes.
It is a measure of our city.
It is a measure of our state,
to be able to receive this giant event known as the World Cup.
The proposals have been met with major resistance from environmentalists,
who say private real estate interests are pushing major development
that's not suitable for the city's needs.
The debate is now focused on the dilapidated 15-acre Pontal de Estaleiro,
on the banks of the Guaiba River, where developers are looking to build
a multi-million dollar apartment complex,
just around the corner from the city's Beira-Rio soccer stadium.
The Pontal is the tip of the iceberg.
If it passes there, it'll pass everywhere else.
The door will be open.
So that's our worry today.
Today it's the Pontal,
and tomorrow will bring all of the other initiatives along the waterfront
that damage the quality of life and the environment.
In response last year, Nogueira and others
formed the Movement in in Defense of the Guaiba Waterfront,
to fight this and future development projects along the 70-km Guaiba coast.
But with the city's Beira-Rio stadium along the banks of the Guaiba,
the waterfront is the heart of the projected World Cup development,
and many soccer fans are excited about the proposed stadium renovations.
The city is planning to construct multiple high-rise hotels and
commercial buildings just outside the stadium
for the hundreds of thousands of fans that will arrive for the event.
To the North, the city plans to revitalize Porto Alegre's defunct port
with a pair of modern commercial towers.
The international environmental organization, Friends of the Earth,
says the development would increase traffic,
garbage and sewage runoff into the Guaiba River,
and infringe on an environmental preservation zone of 30-500 meters
mandated along the banks of the Guaiba River.
Building land use is not permitted in a waterfront area,
in order to maintain the permeable nature of the area's soil
when there is a rise in the water level of the Guaiba River
as well as the issue of the ventilation barrier,
because much of the breeze that enters the city comes from the river,
which is an open space where the breeze circulates freely.
So buildings create barriers
that damage the circulation of the breeze and ventilation in the city.
At the heart of the debate is also the development model for the city.
Currently much of the land along the Guaiba River is still public,
but critics say the development would essentially privatize the region,
in the name of the World Cup.
For those who have seen the beginning of all of this,
the best example is Barcelona in the 1992 Olympics.
From 1992, all of the cities that hosted large international events,
like the Olympics or the World Cup,
they valued the large influx of capital to carry out these transformations.
You can look at these models
and these areas that are called "revitalized,"
they are handed over to those who have money to visit these places.
So it is the privatization of the space.
But Carlos Aita, President of the Industrial and Civil Construction Union,
which supports the development projects, says that won't happen here.
The banks of the Guaiba will never be 100% private.
That doesn't make sense.
It needs to have a balanced-use.
Parts for private use or private investment,
with a part of that also for public use,
and part of it destined exclusively to public use.
That's a modern vision,
and we are not inventing it, we are copying it from other cities.
But these projects will not come without a price.
Thousands of low-income families are scheduled to be removed by the
World Cup developments, to make way for roads, an extended airport
and numerous additional projects. This is a tough sell, especially in
the neighborhood of Cristal, just South of the Beira-Rio stadium,
where hundreds of low-income people were recently displaced
to make way for the new Barra shopping center and a giant
chain store owned by Wal-Mart.
A lot of people that I knew lived there, friends who came from the slums,
so a lot of people that I knew lived there.
It was sad when they destroyed the houses there to build that mall.
Tania Siqueira may be a soccer fan, and she's happy the World Cup is
coming to Porto Alegre, but that doesn't mean she agrees with the
development. She and her neighbors fear their humble riverfront homes
could also be added to the slate to be removed in the name of progress.
I don't think there is the necessity to do this for the World Cup,
because it's only going to last for two months, and then it's over.
There are so many things they want to do,
I think they are just wasting money, that could be invested in other things.
Siqueira's position is likely held by many.
Although the whole city is excited about the World Cup,
citizens vetoed the high-rise complex on the Pontal de Estaleiro,
in a popular vote on August 23.
The decision may be a sign
that many city residents prefer the status quo to the World Cup projects.
But Porto Alegre's development debate is far from over.
Brazil's Getulio Vargas Foundation estimates that over the next 5 years,
the 2014 World Cup will generate 3.5 million jobs across the country.
With Secopa, Porto Alegre is already ahead of the game,
actively courting investors to raise the more than U.S.$2 billion it needs
to proceed with all of the proposed World Cup development projects.
Meanwhile activists from the Gaucho Environmental Movement
say their struggle for a preserved public waterfront has just begun.
"The Guaiba is ours, it's not for sale ..."
"The Guaiba is ours, it's not for sale ..."