The Politics of Differentiation and the Co‐Production of the “Model Periphery” in Brazil’s Public Housing

In Latin America’s pink tide democracies, peripheries were pivotal openings into the ambiguities of political and economic urban governance. Once portrayed as territories decay, state disregard, societal oblivion, turned key moral spatial assemblages in Brazil’s post-neoliberal project a “de-poored,” middle-class country. This article draws on ethnographic research conducted two peripheral Minha Casa Vida projects—Brazil’s large-scale public housing program—in city Porto Alegre. Charting long-term entanglements local activism, communal hope, national developmentalism, I argue that zones illuminate ambivalences state- place-making. Unveiling politics differentiation distended governance render one periphery successful case market intervention over other, explore how images “model periphery” are enforced through infrastructures worth effacement its failed Other: intractable faraway periphery, deemed to disappear name accountability social development. conclusion, suggests consorted travails leaders, citizen activists, politicians, planners casting visibility onto model contribute bolstering obscuring extant patterns segregation inequality.