Presentation short abstract

This paper examines how heterogeneous infrastructures shape urban metabolism and socioenvironmental inequalities in the Favela do Sapé. Comparing works along the Sapé river, it shows that infrastructure is not neutral but unevenly produced socionature.

Presentation long abstract

Drawing on Urban Political Ecology, this paper examines how heterogeneous infrastructural configurations shape urban metabolism and produce socioenvironmental inequalities in the Favela do Sapé, São Paulo. Considering infrastructure as a central mediator of socioecological relations, we analyze how interventions funded by the Growth Acceleration Program, despite significant investments in slums upgrading, reconfigured flows, uses, and practices, generating both punctual improvements and processes of displacement and re-precarization through reoccupation. The study shows that slums upgrading is permeated by power relations, divergent interests, and complex arrangements among public agents, technical actors, armed groups, and residents. These dynamics configure an urban metabolism marked by contradictions and disputes. By comparing works inside and outside the favela along the Sapé river, we demonstrate that infrastructure does not function as a neutral network but as socionature produced unevenly. The mismatch between federal financing logics and the territorial dynamics of the slum contributed to environmental injustices, underscoring the need for more democratic decision-making from the project design stage and for continued state presence after urbanization. Social mobilization and community organization emerge as fundamental to metabolic mediation and to contesting the meanings of urban intervention. Exploring the intersection between urban metabolism and infrastructure, we argue that a dialectical approach reveals who benefits, who is harmed, and which policies arise from different infrastructural configurations. We contend that a just and sustainable infrastructure requires shared responsibility between the state and residents, attention to actions that prevent reoccupation, and a new political orientation capable of producing more equitable urban socionatures.