Gorgeous but dangerous: Comparing Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town’s soft-power struggles

Abstract

How do deeply unequal cities in the Global South project soft power, and what are the tensions and contradictions that emerge when they do? Cities’ strategies to enhance their international appeal can be gauged through three interlocking or complementary approaches: first, leveraging the strategic value of events and associated services; second, developing iconic architecture and mega-projects; and third, making themselves attractive to the so-called “creative class.” Drawing on a brief comparative analysis of Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, these strategies are assessed in relation to the dynamics of soft power and soft disempowerment. Although Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town share formidable resources to generate soft power, their societal complexities of crime and violence cast a heavy disempowering shadow on their innovative soft power strategies.

Despite the ubiquity of Joseph Nye’s now infamous concept of soft power,^1,2 few studies have applied it to the realm of cities. Yet, spatially, it is from cities that various forms of soft power are projected—be it through hosting mega-events or creating world-famous museums and other iconic tourist experiences. Moreover, as shared global challenges such as climate change, infectious pandemics, urban violence, and political extremism increasingly require localized responses, cities are becoming pivotal players in global governance.

Amongst cities in the Global South, those with “global city” aspirations are also those whose inequalities are probably most visible, both within the cities and between the city and its region. ³ Whilst Shanghai may flourish, much of rural China may not share in its prosperity. Similarly, the emergence of global cities in the advanced industrialized world coincided with the emerging power of Big Tech firms and created what Joel Kotkin calls “the coming of neo- feudalism.” For Kotkin, spiraling property values have made property ownership for working- and even middle-class families in many OECD cities out of reach to all but the “high-tech oligarchs,” thus creating “neo-feudal cities.” ⁴ Cities are often first in line to manage the consequences of these inequalities. Thus it is no surprise that many cities seek both additional revenue streams and means of projecting their international appeal: filming movies and advertisements, welcoming multinationals and expats, and hosting tourists, major conferences, and mega-events.

Whereas a growing literature echoes the role of cities in relation to global governance, ⁵ not much has been written on the soft power of cities. The few works that do so ⁶ focus indirectly on museums or diplomacy. ⁷ Yet it is justified to consider the soft power of cities as an analytically distinct category from their associated nation-states. Cities do not always kowtow to their national governments. In 2017, for example, the city council for Berkeley, California ruled that any firm to benefit from or do business in support of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration bill towards Mexico will be required to forfeit all contracts with the city. ⁸ In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, drug gang leaders imposed COVID-19 restrictions, defying Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s refusal to do so at the federal level. ⁹ In some deeply divided societies, focusing on cities rather than the “nation-state” could yield greater international attraction—thereby ironically engaging in “un-nation” branding, as seen in Tel Aviv’s and Jerusalem’s respective relations to Israel’s soft power. ¹⁰ Conversely, national rulers may also explicitly engineer a city’s soft power to project their own power nationally. Amidst a raging war with Tigrayan rebels in northeastern Ethiopia and during the run-up to elections, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed spent $1 billion USD on various grand projects (an exhibition centre, a science museum, and several parks) in Addis Ababa to re-fashion the capital as a symbol of national unity. The ruling party won decisively and “state media broadcast drone footage of the revamped city at the top of the evening news.” ¹¹

The degree to which aspiring non-Western cities successfully manage transnational problems directly bears upon the quest of rising powers for status in a changing global order. Consider for example, the potential soft-disempowerment effects facing China in the wake of the prolonged and severe lockdowns in Shanghai from April to June 2022, when most of the world had ended COVID-19 restrictions. ¹² Likewise, enhancing aspiring cities’ soft power may contribute to shifts in the distribution of global tourism that are more favourable to the developing world, given that Europe and North America benefit from more than half of all tourism globally. ¹³

One explanation for the limited attention paid to the soft power of cities may be a result of the influential “global cities” or “world cities” literature. This literature often overlooks the fact that cities that are not primary nodes in global supply chain networks nor providers of advanced services or products may nevertheless be primary players in terms of attraction (in relation to tourism, for example). The idea that a city seeks to “punch above its weight” refers to that city’s strategic attempts to enhance its attractiveness, whether or not it is considered to be a global or even primary (national) city.

Although they are secondary cities to Johannesburg and São Paulo in South Africa and Brazil respectively, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro serve as icons for global imaginaries of their countries as well as growth poles in their own right. In this sense, both cities possess considerable soft power. However, the degree to which these two cities can fully project their attractiveness requires navigating various complexities, not least the consequences flowing from profound societal inequality. Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town are particularly appropriate cases to illustrate these complexities. First, as will be examined in more detail below, the two cities have common historical backgrounds as established tourist destinations through which related “post-industrial” services emerged. Most notably, since their democratization in the 1980s and 1990s, the two cities have consistently attempted to leverage the globalization spinoff effects by hosting mega-events. Second, given that India has yet to host an Olympic Games or World Cup, Brazil and South Africa are the only democracies amongst the BRICS group to use these mega-events as a means of status signaling. Given that democracies are more vulnerable to soft-disempowerment risks than non-democracies, as much of the literature on protests and social activism against the events in these two cases illustrates, it is not surprising that since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, few to no mega-events are, for the foreseeable future, scheduled to be held in democracies in the developing world. ¹⁴

How do deeply divided cities in the Global South seek to project soft power and what are the tensions and contradictions that emerge when they do? This paper sets out to address this question in three parts. After presenting the framework for analysis, a brief overview of Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro’s soft-power strategies is presented, followed by an examination of the soft-disempowerment risks these attempts elicited and how these two cities have sought to mitigate such risks. My paper contends that Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro’s societal inequalities and their consequent levels of crime and violence limit the ability of these two cities to fully capitalize on their incredible natural and cultural appeal.

Cities and the nexus of soft power and soft disempowerment

Compared to the literature on cities and soft power, studies of city branding are more abundant. ¹⁵ Although branding and soft power are closely related, soft power is the more expansive concept. Whilst branding involves raising awareness and informing target audiences about one’s uniqueness, soft power involves various strategies of public diplomacy through fostering understanding, developing lasting relationships, and actively cooperating with the aim of exercising influence. ¹⁶ The emphasis of cities’ soft-power approaches—as the following framework of analysis suggests—is more upon the political and economic contestation that arises when cities, especially those in the developing world, seek to become more globally attractive. As Keith Dinnie notes, “[M]uch of the published research into city branding originates in the disciplines of marketing and urban studies, two fields that tended to follow parallel rather than interdisciplinary paths.” ¹⁷ In addition, much of the research on city branding has tended to focus on the Global North, especially cities in the UK, USA, and Canada, ¹⁸ with little attention from scholars in International Relations and International Political Economy.

This paper draws upon Paul Michael Brannagan and Richard Giulianotti’s analytical framework that highlights the contextual interplay between soft power and soft disempowerment. ¹⁹ Whereas most analyses have applied the concept of soft power in a relatively one-dimensional, descriptive manner, whilst largely assuming causational affects, Brannagan and Giulianotti problematize these causal claims by framing soft power in a multi-dimensional domain. Soft-power resources and their deployment remain contingent upon negotiating and mitigating various disempowerment effects. Accordingly, they distinguish between three stages. Stage one involves positioning, i.e., What strategic choices prompt states to attempt to make themselves attractive; who do these states wish to attract; and what is attractive to these target audiences? Stage two requires credibility. This is an intersubjective and relational process, dependent on a “shared understanding of the constitution of both attraction and credibility.” ²⁰ In short, do the target audiences consider the “attraction claims” believable based on the “credible attraction filter”? Finally, stage three refers to the process whereby competitors may highlight inconsistencies in states’ claims of attraction or even “shame opponents for any perceived immoral, unethical, and/or illegitimate in(actions).” ²¹ By flagging inconsistencies or normative concerns, states, intergovernmental organizations, the media, the corporate sector, and/or civil society can produce disempowerment effects. Stated differently, “for soft power to take shape, states must generate greater public attention and interest, which in turn affords competing players increased opportunities to locate and highlight any perceived ‘failings.’” ²²

Although Brannagan and Giulianotti’s nexus of soft power and soft disempowerment was developed in relation to states, I draw on a comparative analysis of Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro to develop a framework applicable to the soft-power/soft-disempowerment interface of cities, notably those in the Global South with similar developmental challenges. In this regard, cities’ roles and strategies to enhance their international appeal can be gauged through three complementary strategies. First, they emphasize the strategic value of events and associated services; second, they highlight the development of iconic architecture and mega-projects; and finally, they seek to make themselves attractive to the so-called “creative class.” ²³

Mega-events such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics Games are public demonstrations of what it means to be “globalized and world-class.” ²⁴ This “festivalisation” has become irresistible to what John R. Logan and Harvey Molotch call urban “growth coalitions,” whereby events are believed to bring not only visitors—and thus revenue—but also image benefits for the locale. ²⁵ As part of hosting mega-events, cities carefully craft urban spaces aimed at producing “authentic” experiences, ²⁶ often strategically conceived to promote a city’s distinctiveness. International conferences are also of critical relevance, as are art galleries, concert halls, museums, and theatres. ²⁷

Like mega-events, iconic buildings also put a city on the global map, announcing that this urban centre belongs to an elite league whose members shape the world. ²⁸ For analytical purposes, Leslie Sklair distinguishes between typical and unique icons, which are both vital assets for places that want to become world cities or reinforce their existing status. ²⁹ Typical icons include buildings widely recognized as works of art (like the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur which emphasize economic importance and modernity), which may copy elements of unique icons (perhaps best demonstrated by the ubiquitous waterfront districts now found in many cities).

Finally, the capacity of cities to bring together technology, talent, and tolerance, exemplified by Richard Florida’s concept of a creative class, underlines the value of creativity as a driver of economic growth, especially in high-tech industries. ³⁰ Florida contends that urban regions with substantive assemblages of talent (measured in terms of the percentage of residents with higher education), tolerance (especially towards foreign-born workers), and artistic and creative industries tend to spur development in post-industrial cities. Whilst not without its critics—most notably its initial bias towards the Global North ³¹ —the heuristic value of the concept of the creative class remains useful in developing this analytical framework.

The strategic use of mega-events and their associated services, the promotion of iconic architecture and mega-projects, and the leveraging of the creative class and creative industries may be problematic, given that these initiatives can exacerbate social problems and potentially complicate cities’ quests for soft power. ³² Some mega-events may contribute to revitalizing urban areas, ³³ allow for rapid urban infrastructure development, ³⁴ and economically benefit their host cities and leverage long-term legacies. ³⁵ At the same time, events can also create social tensions and contradictions. Some point to environmental destruction and underutilized but expensive sports facilities, ³⁶ socio-economic polarization, and legacies of a very temporary nature. ³⁷ Others contend that the effects of mega-events on a city’s image tend to be short-lived. ³⁸ The sheer costs of hosting also often cause disempowerment effects. Some argue that the 2004 Athens Olympics substantively contributed to Greece’s financial crisis in 2009, whilst the 1976 Olympics nearly bankrupted Montreal, requiring debt repayments for forty years and costing thirteen times the original budget. ³⁹ Similarly, the inability to coordinate between twenty-one different agencies and institutions during Delhi’s hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games prompted direct government intervention in late 2009 to “rescue” the Games, whose costs also ballooned from $1.5 to $15 billion USD. ⁴⁰

Along with other urban projects such as gated communities or entertainment and shopping facilities, mega-events epitomize the “concentration on spectacle…rather than on the substance of economic and social problems,” as David Harvey observes. ⁴¹ The focus on mega-events and their related infrastructure may, therefore, divert efforts to ensure a cleaner, safer, and generally more pleasant and liveable public space. Large development schemes that aim to make a city attractive—often closely related to mega-events—tend to be poorly integrated into the existing urban fabric and transportation infrastructure, bearing little relationship to surrounding activities and residential communities. ⁴² In other words, during mega-events, spaces are opened up and extraordinary performances are staged, but more mundane activities and needs are pushed out of sight. ⁴³ More recently, the creative class concept has been criticized as being biased towards the “advanced” industrialized world and marked by affluence and concentrated advantages, on the one side, and much greater poverty and concentrated disadvantage, on the other. ⁴⁴ The contrast is particularly striking given the visibility of so many gated communities in Brazil and South Africa. ⁴⁵

In what follows, I draw on these three dimensions to reveal how these strategic ideas help cities project their soft power. Yet, as the comparative illustration with Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town reveals, crime and security concerns cast a heavy shadow on these cities, given the ever-present risks of soft disempowerment these social problems trigger.

Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro’s soft-power strategies

Table Mountain, Sugar Loaf, and Christ the Redeemer not only grace some of the most spectacular urban landscapes in the world, but have become globally recognized icons for Brazil and South Africa. Yet Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town are both cities of contrasts. Inequality and poverty—visible in the vast favelas or shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro and the shacks of Cape Town—are as breathtaking as the landscape. Few places on earth could be so close geographically, yet socially and economically as far apart as the super-affluent suburbs of Camps Bay, Clifton, and Bishop’s Court and the poor makeshift settlements in Khayelitsha and Gugulethu in Cape Town, or, in Rio de Janeiro, the posh Leblon, Ipanema, and Copacabana in contrast to the favela homes in Rochina and Complexo de Alemão. In both countries, sprawling informal settlements can be traced to the abolition of slavery and the subsequent lack of official urban integration and access to land. ⁴⁶

Rio de Janeiro’s and Cape Town’s quests for global attraction calibrates—at the city level—the changing nature of world order and the accentuated role of regional powers in the Global South. Cities’ central role in hosting mega-events, specifically mega-sports events in China (2008), Brazil (2014 and 2016), Russia (2014 and 2018), and South Africa (2010), are illustrative of this changing global epoch, as David Black’s contribution to this special issue highlights. For many political elites—especially those in these states—having Rio de Janeiro or Beijing or Sochi host these prestigious events symbolized not only their emergence as “rising powers,” but also the beginning of the end of undisputed Western hegemony. Coinciding with the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2008 and the subsequent rise of populism in Europe and the United States, these events were grist to the mill for those espousing the decline of the post-1945 liberal world order. Moreover, that Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Mumbai, Moscow, and Beijing were becoming “world cities” also spoke to the success of alternative economic development models which eschewed the Anglo-American approach in favour of “state-led capitalism.” ⁴⁷

Yet the appetite for hosting events with a global footprint also precedes this era. For example, as early as 1996, moves were afoot in Cape Town to bid for the 2004 Olympic Games. That the city received the third most votes even though it lacked the required infrastructural capacity bears testament to the considerable international goodwill the country then enjoyed. Cape Town is located in the Western Cape province, the only province in South Africa ruled by the political opposition, the Democratic Alliance. Both city and province frequently push a narrative of regional exceptionalism, including higher levels of service delivery, better means of reducing rolling electricity cuts, higher residential property values, and a generally more sought-after lifestyle. ⁴⁸ Indeed, from 2011 to 2016, the process of “semi-gration”—that is, not full emigration but moving from one province to another—led to house prices in the Western Cape increasing by 54 per cent, compared to just 25 per cent in the Johannesburg-anchored province of Gauteng. ⁴⁹

Historically, domestic political and economic consequences also shaped these processes. In both Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, the deindustrialization of the 1990s saw the rapid emergence of services, tourism, and related industries and the growing significance of the “creative economy.” In Rio de Janeiro, the creative industries accounted for 18 percent of all economic activity, with the audiovisual sector being a key player. ⁵⁰ This sector has pursued a dual approach of expanding access to domestic films and stimulating domestic consumption, whilst also using the audiovisual sector to develop “cinematographic tourism,” attracting tourists through movies set in Brazil and Rio de Janeiro in particular, such as City of God. ⁵¹ Various state-sponsored agencies have promoted the domestic and international expansion of the film industry. In 2012, the Rio Film Commission offered nearly $1 million USD to productions that promoted and marketed Rio de Janeiro as a location, whilst Rio Filme and Filme Rio have both boosted local productions and sought to widen access by developing exhibition spaces in poorer areas of the city, such as the cinema CineCarioca Méier in the Complexo do Alemão favela and through programs such as the Cine Mais Cultura network. ⁵² In fact, the audiovisual sector was a strategic sector that would take the lead in capitalizing on Rio de Janeiro’s international publicity after the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. The development of an Audiovisual City by Rio Filme in an abandoned police headquarters in a derelict part of the city, Sao Cristovão, but adjacent to the $2.8 billion USD urban regeneration of Rio de Janeiro’s old port district, Porto Maravilha, suggests “a merging of cultural policy and urban development.” ⁵³

Similarly, despite Cape Town’s appealing climate, geography, and lifestyle, the city’s creative industries emerged amidst periods of crisis, confrontation, and social and intellectual turbulence. ⁵⁴ By the early 2000s, approximately two hundred advertising, communication, and design firms operated in the city, including numerous media, publishing, film, architecture, performing arts, fashion, music, literary arts, and heritage enterprises, culminating in the central development district (CBD) having the highest concentration of creative industries in South Africa. Indeed, in April 2002, Newsweek rated Cape Town as one of the top eight “creative cities” in the world. ⁵⁵ Within the context of preparations for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, “Creative Cape Town,” a public-private partnership, was instrumental in the city’s successful bid (short-listed with Bilbao and Dublin) to be the World Design Organization’s 2014 World Design Capital, as part of “a more comprehensive creative place-making strategy.” ⁵⁶ Given that cities in the developed world are usually selected—previous winners were Helsinki, Turin, and Seoul—in Cape Town a discursive shift towards “developmental design,” or design intended to meet the needs of the developing world, framed its selection as “the first African design city.” ⁵⁷

Besides hosting mega-sports events such as the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, Rio de Janeiro put on a slew of major conferences and second-level sport and cultural events during the 2010s. ⁵⁸ Cape Town hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the 2003 Cricket World Cup, and the 2010 World Cup and regularly hosts various “secondary” events. ⁵⁹ In both cities, hosting events to boost tourism is an explicit strategy. ⁶⁰ These include several annual events specifically aimed at boosting Cape Town’s and Rio de Janeiro’s appeal to the LGBTQ+ tourist market. Both cities are marketed as “gay capitals,” with South Africa being the first country in Africa and the fifth in the world to recognize same-sex marriage in 2006, with Brazil following in 2013. ⁶¹

Tourism and mega-events have catalyzed the regeneration of urban development, notably around both cities’ former industrial port areas. The proximity of Rio de Janeiro’s Porto Maravilha district to the financial district facilitated the rejuvenation of the area as part of the city’s cultural and creative sector, anchored by the iconic architecture of the Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow), AquaRio (Rio Marine Aquarium), and the Museu de Arte do Rio (Rio Art Museum). By 2016, the neighbourhood was considered a strategic area for the promotion of at least fifteen cultural initiatives, bolstered by the restoration of areas such as Tiradentes Square and the neighbourhood of Lapa, and a light rail system integrating the central downtown district with the airport and bus station, and built ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games. ⁶²

With more than three hundred art deco buildings, and buildings from the internationally- acclaimed Brazilian modernist movement led by Oscar Niemeyer, Lúcio Costa, and Roberto Burle Marx, in 2020 Rio de Janeiro was named by UNESCO as the first World Capital for Architecture—the first time the prize was given to the host city of the World Conference of Architects. Over the last decade, the city has attracted world-famous contemporary architects to design public sites, like Museu do Amanhã (Santiago Calatrava) and Cidade das Artes (Christian de Portzamparc). ⁶³ In 2012, UNESCO declared the entire city to be a World Heritage Site, one of the first in the world. ⁶⁴ So too, since the late 1980s, has the rejuvenated Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town become the most visited tourist attraction in the country and the country’s most famous shopping, leisure, and upmarket office complex, whilst remaining a fully working harbour. An increasingly attractive port of call for the world’s cruise liners, the Waterfront not only precipitated the development of a slew of hotels but also new investments in adjacent areas extending as far back as Green Point, Mouille Point, and the Foreshore. In 1999, Cape Town’s International Convention Centre was established, and 2017 saw the opening of the iconic Zeits Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeits MOCAA), self-described as “the largest museum of contemporary art in Africa.” ⁶⁵ Located between the Waterfront and the Business District, de Waterkant (the water’s edge) emerged from its bohemian existence in the 1980s to become Cape Town’s premier gay leisure district. Once a decaying centre for light industries, de Waterkant has been marketed as “Africa’s only gay village,” with rocketing property prices and upmarket leisure facilities, despite being “the smallest gay village in the world.” ⁶⁶ As was the case with Cape Town selling itself as “Africa’s first design city,” it is ironic that one of the continent’s least African cities so frequently invokes the “African label” to project its soft power. ⁶⁷ Nevertheless, given the deeply unequal societies from which these two cities seek to attract global capital, all three soft-power strategies—mega-events, iconic architecture, and mega-projects and creative industries—face the challenges of inequality of access and unequal distribution of benefits, with increased risks of soft disempowerment.

Soft-disempowerment risks

As the title of this paper notes, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town face soft-power struggles, as various audiences dispute the cities’ attraction claims by highlighting inconsistencies or normative concerns. What tensions and contradictions emerge from the pursuit of strategies to enhance international attraction amidst such striking contrasts? Whilst Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro’s shared multicultural vibrancy is fundamental to their self-projected attraction narratives, geo-spatial inequalities coincide with racial and class stratification. Much as hosting events boosted the development of creative industries, iconic buildings, and urban renewal, it also heightened social opposition to the social, racial, and security inequalities and inconsistencies these enterprises set in motion, thus increasing the risk of disempowerment.

In Rio de Janeiro, for example, whilst social diversity was shown as an advantage to economic development and social inequalities recognized as challenges to address, in 2015 the city forcibly removed residents from the favelas to make way for construction of the Olympic Park ⁶⁸ —a far call from the Games’ opening ceremony which celebrated favela life. Numerous social movements countered the displacement of vulnerable groups and the rising cost of living in newly gentrified areas, drawing on the “Right to the City,” Henri Lefebvre’s concept of highlighting collective action to reclaim urban space for “ordinary” citizens, which even helped to inform a right enshrined in a 2011 federal law. ⁶⁹

These tensions also apply to iconic architecture. During preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, the public authorities of Rio de Janeiro decided to build a footpath from the shantytown of Rocinha to the adjacent upper-class district of São Conrado, which was designed by the star architect Oscar Niemeyer. However, during prior consultations, residents of Rocinha had indicated that public sanitation was their most urgent need. ⁷⁰ Moreover, as forced removals in preparation for the World Cup and the Olympics increased, social movements and NGOs put in place a strategy of "counter-marketing” to contest the policies around mega-events. From 2013, popular street demonstrations criticizing the World Cup and the Olympic Games helped to change the mood of the population. ⁷¹ They brought together different social groups and had diffuse demands, with many asking for “FIFA-standard” public policies.

Similarly, the Cape Town stadium, built for the 2010 World Cup and spectacularly located at the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent to the Waterfront, has become an iconic part of Cape Town’s skyline. Yet, the City Council’s initial idea was to upgrade an existing stadium in Athlone (a lower-income area) to fast-track infrastructural development projects beyond the downtown core. However, that project stalled, reportedly due to a FIFA delegate’s objection that “a billion television viewers don’t want to see shacks and poverty on this scale.” ⁷² Given the extraordinary powers delegated to supra-national bodies such as the IOC and FIFA in the run-up to a mega-event, yielding to these powerful institutions also reveals these bodies’ role in framing or shaping what is considered “world class.” IOC and FIFA directives often contradict local development priorities and thus ferment disempowerment, as the examples of the Cape Town stadium and the Brazilian protests against World Cup spending suggest.

Whilst many of these urban regeneration projects sought to make Cape Town a “world city,” they also heightened narratives and concerns about social exclusion. For example, some contended that the Waterfront development obliterated the histories and lives of slaves, African dock workers, and others. Many also contend that the Waterfront epitomizes Cape Town’s “glocalization,” given its commodification of South African culture, exemplified by the country’s “crown jewels” being bought by a Dubai-based property investment consortium in 2006. ⁷³ Similarly, with the development of De Waterkant, rents in the village rapidly rose beyond the means even of its former white middle-class residents, and re-segregated “the local gay community at the very time they have been given the opportunity to appropriate urban space in which to express their sexual identity.” ⁷⁴ Much of Cape Town’s downtown development mirrored similar trends in Rio de Janeiro: soaring residential property prices militated against mixed-use, mixed-income areas and the gradual displacement of low-income groups. The overall spatial configuration of these downtown districts underpinning Cape Town’s “world cityness” involves high income levels and low inner-city density, accompanied by extremely population-dense, low-income areas on the periphery. ⁷⁵

Although states, like cities, may face multiple challenges to their attraction claims, the most dominant and complex effects of soft disempowerment facing Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town spring from concerns about crime and violence, mostly—but not exclusively—linked to the prevalence of gangs. It is not that these two cities do not face other risks of soft disempowerment, but that public safety has been the most enduring concern. ⁷⁶ Indeed, even mainstream media and social media frequently lament these two cities’ high levels of crime and inequality. ⁷⁷ In the run-ups to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, this issue was also frequently highlighted by the international media. ⁷⁸

Urban geography explains much about how gang culture became prevalent. Given the unprecedented pressures of housing costs, migrants in Rio de Janeiro built their homes on the steep hillsides, often wedged between middle- and upper-class neighbourhoods. In Cape Town, those unable to find accommodation in the central housing districts began forming squatter camps on the Cape Flats, the expansive, flat, low-lying (and thus sandy and wind-swept) area to the southeast of Table Mountain. By the 1960s and 1970s, the Cape Flats would become notorious as an “apartheid dumping ground,” with numerous forced removals occasioned by the Group Areas Act. ⁷⁹ Likewise, during the 1960s and 1970s, Rio de Janeiro’s municipal authorities sought to move people out of areas like Rocinha through three partial, but ultimately failed, removals. ⁸⁰

The devastation caused by these forced removals eroded most of the informal social control enacted through extended family networks—parents and neighbours who kept youth crime in check. In combination with failed government measures to control alcohol sales and the subsequent emergence of a large criminalized market that extorted protection money in exchange for maintaining order in unregulated taverns, the erosion of informal social control gradually gave rise to the emergence of a gang culture in Cape Town. By the late 1980s, the criminalization of Mandrax—a sleeping pill that became a potent recreational drug, when combined with alcohol or smoked with other drugs—intensified these processes of gang formation. ⁸¹

Similar dynamics appeared in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. As the United States extinguished many of the Colombian drug operations in the 1980s, the international drug trade increasingly ran through Rio de Janeiro. The police took a militarized approach to combating drug trafficking, with the ensuing conflict seen as a “war” in which the military dictatorships intervened via the military police. By the 1970s, for-hire assassins emerged from the ranks of the military police, and by the 1980s, civilians emerged as leaders of these death squads. Many of those leaders would go on to be democratically elected as mayors, city councillors, and state representatives. Since the 2000s, many civil and military police officers, security agents, and firefighters also operate as militias and are reported to control between 20 to 25 percent of Rio de Janeiro’s territory. ⁸² Whilst South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission also affirmed the prevalence of apartheid-era death squads, militias never emerged on the institutional scale of Rio de Janeiro’s. Even in the more gang-prone Cape Town, vigilante movements that have emerged tended to be short-lived.

Authorities have responded to these significant disempowerment effects with various strategies. For our purposes, the two most relevant are attempts at containment and, to a lesser extent, strategies of representational acceptance. Attempts at containment involve both discursive and actual physical and geographic interventions. For example, a mayoral committee member responded to Cape Town’s crowning as the murder capital South Africa by saying that “gang violence disproportionately contributes to the metro’s high rate of violent crime…. If you pull the gang statistics or the gang murders out of the equation, we drop out of the race for violent crime immediately.” ⁸³ And whilst the Rio de Janeiro city council sponsored the development of favela tourism, it also sought to downplay the size and scale of its favelas. For example, concerned that Google Maps made the city look like an “immense agglomeration of favelas” which underplayed its tourist attraction in the run-up to the World Cup, Rio de Janeiro pressured Google Maps to render the favelas as green spaces. ⁸⁴

Rio de Janeiro’s favelas have also experienced large-scale physical interventions on account of a state-level policing program, the Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (Pacifying Police Unit). ⁸⁵ At the same time, investments in infrastructure and policies aimed at reducing income inequalities through the federal Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (Growth Acceleration Program) were introduced prior to the 2016 Olympic Games and 2014 World Cup. On the Cape Flats, in contrast, no comparable interventions were launched when South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup. However, when violence resurged in some neighbourhoods, the then-minister of police Fikile Mbalula advocated military intervention, while the premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille, explicitly cited Rio de Janeiro’s pacification program as a model for Cape Town to follow. ⁸⁶ Scarlett Cornelissen argues that these attempts to securitize mega-events served a dual rationale: ⁸⁷ to demonstrate to international media the states capacities to control crime; and to reinforce the idea of the state’s sovereignty to domestic audiences. In short, containing and securitizing events also served a “selling” function, given that the perceived crime rate was a potential deterrent for many prospective visitors. ⁸⁸

An alternative way in which city authorities could respond to the “gorgeous but dangerous” paradox is acceptance. Marketing officials often fail to obliterate or “undo” their cities’ less desirable features, such as poverty or a shameful legacy. Yet, “urban imageries are not just made up of what is explicitly showed and displayed in representations, because invisible, absent, or ghostly presences” also build and shape city identities. ⁸⁹ Accepting the popular representations of crime in Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro could augment other soft-power strategies. The fact that both cities already feature in several international movies about crime and gang life serves a representational purpose whilst contributing to the development of the cities’ film and creative industries. ⁹⁰ In particular, film tourism often enhances a nation’s appeal, the impact of Lord of the Rings on New Zealand being the most lucrative example.

Conclusion

Despite growing interest in the rising importance of cities in global governance, the literature on cities and soft power remains underdeveloped. In this regard, this paper has sought to make three points. First, some cities may play a decisive role in driving international tourist and lifestyle appeal, one that is disproportionate to their secondary position within global or even regional capital and supply chains. Such cities “punch above their weight” to the extent that they become icons for the country at large. How cities seek to enhance their attractions justifies the development of the soft power of cities as a distinct conceptual category. Second, as is the case for nation-states, the ability of cities to project their soft power is often subject to contestation which heightens their risks of soft disempowerment. Thus, social movements, the media, citizen groups, and other stakeholders may question policy inconsistencies or normative claims, thereby damaging credibility claims and prompting cities to adopt alternative approaches.

Third, for cities in the Global South, particularly in states with claims to regional power, the allure of enhancing the soft power attained through hosting mega-events often boosts the development of iconic architectures and projects, as well as creative industries. Yet, given the unequal insertion of these cities into the global political economy, intensified “world city-ness” amplifies social disruption and increases the likelihood that soft disempowerment overshadows soft empowerment. These disruptions are especially salient considering the tensions emerging from the projection of soft power at the global or international as opposed to the regional level. Cape Town, for example, attracts foreign nationals from elsewhere in Africa, yet it is also a city where outbreaks of xenophobia against other Africans have occurred. Populist political discourse—rarely distinguishing between legal and illegal Africans from the continent—blames immigrants for the prevalence of drugs and crime. The ensuing anti-immigrant violence fuels international media coverage and its consequent soft-disempowerment effects. Given that these international and regional tensions play out most acutely at the urban level, much of the burden of managing these tensions shifts to cities.

In sum, the risks of soft disempowerment overshadowing soft empowerment seem more likely amongst nascent democracies in the developing world, where disproportionate spending on attaining “world city” status without clear public benefit only increases the disillusionment of their citizenry with democracy.