Neoliberal restructuring, climate de-adaptation, and urban infrastructure failure in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Urban climate governance is increasingly undermined by processes operating through omission, disinvestment, and narrative reframing rather than overt denial. This paper investigates how these dynamics unfolded in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where extreme flooding in 2024 exposed a long trajectory of infrastructural degradation. Drawing on municipal budgets, audits, and policy documents, the analysis uses process tracing to reconstruct how adaptive capacity was systematically hollowed out. The paper develops the concept of climate de-adaptation to describe the active reversal of existing protective capacity under neoliberal governance. Two pathways emerge: material disinvestment through the dismantling of drainage infrastructure, and narrative displacement through the recasting of protective systems as obsolete. These dynamics enabled partial privatization of sanitation services while excluding capital-intensive flood protection from private responsibility. The findings demonstrate how climate de-adaptation operates as both a material and a discursive process through which neoliberal urbanism confronts the climate crisis.