Private neighborhoods as an emerging imaginary of neoliberal urbanization: a case study of Golden Lake in Porto Alegre

This article examines the emergence of ‘private neighborhoods’ in Brazil through a case study of Golden Lake in Porto Alegre. Drawing on commercial materials, social media content, incorporation documents, and urban plans, the analysis argues that private neighborhoods present a distinct urban imaginary from traditional gated communities. Contrary to the former, the article proposes that private neighborhoods represent a radical, distinctively neoliberal urban imaginary, ideologizing the total privatization of social life as possible and desirable and the public realm as obsolete. This imaginary is analyzed through the lenses of territorialization, privatization, and imagined autonomy.