From “cycle-view” to “the bike path to death”: The social life of urban infrastructure

Abstract

The paper analyzes the social life of the Bike Path Tim Maia, in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Inaugurated in 2016, the equipment was hailed for offering not only new urban mobility alternatives, but also new framings for the oceanfront landscape. Such combination made the bike path a central element of a broader city project, with the harmonious relationship between humans and nature as one of its main axes. By following the process of ideation, construction, and inauguration of the equipment, as well as its successive collapses, the paper shows how this particular case allows us to reflect on important aspects of urban infrastructures from an anthropological point of view: their multiple timelines, the inextricable relationship between technique and politics, and the different cumulative city projects.