GEOGRAPHIES OF EXCLUSION: THE RACIALIZATION OF URBAN SPACE PRODUCTION

Abstract

This study analyzes environmental racism as a structuring vector in the racialized production of urban space in Brazil, highlighting how skin color shapes access to territorial, environmental, and urban rights. Based on a critical literature review and an intersectoral theoretical-conceptual framework, the study reveals that the absence of specific public policies, the omission of the State, and the selectivity of institutional actions produce geographies of exclusion, in which Black populations are disproportionately exposed to socio-environmental risks. The research adopts a qualitative approach, a deductive method, and an exploratory and descriptive nature regarding its objectives, articulating document analysis and geographical hermeneutics as interpretative tools. The text demonstrates that environmental racism is not a collateral effect of urban policies, but rather a mechanism that structures the city as a territory of racialized inequalities. Legal frameworks, institutional practices, and territorial dynamics are mapped, evidencing the close relationship between race, space, and public policy, and revealing that without racial justice, there can be no environmental justice or full realization of the right to the city. The article concludes that environmental racism operates as a gear in the machinery of urban inequality, relegating Black populations to territories marked by precariousness and risk. Environmental justice, therefore, requires the inseparable incorporation of racial justice, the recognition of Black communities’ knowledge and practices, and the acknowledgment of peripheral territories as legitimate spaces of political struggle.