Porto Alegre, from social utopia to technological utopia

Porto Alegre (Brazil)From the recreation room on the top floor of the Caldeira Institute, a technology hub in the Navegantes neighbourhood, in Porto Alegre’s Fourth District, Brazil, the landscape seen through its glass-block windows is strongly reminiscent of Barcelona’s Poblenou district thirty or forty years ago. Former industrial buildings are being remodelled to embrace the technological utopia of the 21st century, defined by concepts such as startups, artificial intelligence and the digital economy.

A quarter of a century after hosting the World Social Forum (WSF) —another utopia, this time anti-neoliberal— the capital of Rio Grande do Sul seems to have found a new horizon, thanks to a climate of collaboration among political, economic, business, academic and social-movement actors. This consensus appears to contradict what dominates many international headlines about the country: that Brazil is irreconcilably divided between supporters of Lula and supporters of Bolsonaro. But is this really the case? To what extent can this environment of public-private collaboration help to address the structural inequalities that the WSF also sought to confront? And, above all, has Porto Alegre replaced the failed left-wing utopia of January 2001 with the new panacea of the 21st century? Might chips and artificial intelligence turn out to be not a utopia, but a nightmare?

Beyond the resemblance to Barcelona, Caldeira—a private, non-profit entity—has clear points of contact with the Catalan capital. The project was partly “inspired” by the transformation of the 22@ district and Barcelona’s innovation zones, says Josep Miquel Piqué, executive president of La Salle Technova and former CEO of 22@Barcelona, as well as former head of the city council’s Office of Economic Growth in the mid-2000s. Piqué travels to Porto Alegre a couple of times a year to collaborate with the hub and with other academic and research centres in Rio Grande do Sul’s Regional Development and Innovation Network (RGdS), evaluating projects, sharing experiences and generating synergies.

In the medium term, the Caldeira Institute plans to expand to 22,000 square metres. This expansion is expected to spread rapidly across former industrial land in the Navegantes neighbourhood. The aim is to transform and revitalise the area, turning it into one of the city’s—and the state’s—main engines of development. Technological innovation and the digital economy lie at the core of the institute’s mission.

The two enormous boilers from which the hub takes its name were imported from Scotland in the 20th century. Once, they burned coal to produce steam for the AJ Renner spinning mills. Today, Caldeira burns talent to generate something more enduring: innovation.

There are difficulties, of course. The promoters behind these projects readily acknowledge that the city and the state are located in what they call “the south of the Global South”. So says Rafael Prikladnicki, president of the development agency Invest.RS. The organisation faces the challenge of positioning Porto Alegre (POA) and Rio Grande do Sul on an increasingly competitive global map. The formula, Prikladnicki argues, lies in the combination of “people, community and collaboration”. What is happening, he stresses, is possible only thanks to the “alignment of the public sector, the private sector and the community”.

Lisbon is the only European capital—recently a north without a north—connected to Porto Alegre by a direct flight. Eleven long hours to the south of the Global South, in a country far removed from the most stereotypical images of Brazil. Porto Alegre perhaps suffers from not being Rio, São Paulo, or Buenos Aires, and from finding itself somewhat diluted among these three enormous economic, cultural, and vital hubs of Latin America.

But perhaps it doesn’t need to be more than it is. Perhaps it only needs to show the world that “something incredible is happening here,” says Pedro Valério, executive director of the Caldeira Institute. “You go to London, to Europe, to the Middle East, to Asia, and almost no one talks about Latin America. But here we believe we can change the world; we deeply love what we are doing.”

Correction: Latin America is indeed talked about—but it’s about Milei, Maduro, and so on, and how Donald Trump has once again raised the banner of the Monroe Doctrine.

The story at Caldeira is very different—and they talk about it far and wide. They host discussions on technology, sustainability, and climate change, and they implement local, regional, and global development strategies through—and not only through—Caldeira Week: the tip of the iceberg of their enormous ambition. To witness all this firsthand, this journalist was invited in early October, along with a group of colleagues from the Foreign Press Association in London

Some Initial Precedents?

As already mentioned, this isn’t the first time Porto Alegre has believed it could change the world—and not just in football or Barça, in this case with Ronaldinho Gaúcho, born in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul. For at least a couple of generations, including this writer’s, the city has been associated with the earlier attempt at “alternative globalization” embodied by the World Social Forum. The first meeting was held in the last week of January 2001—exactly a quarter of a century ago—as a counterpoint to the economic power of Davos. Back then, the world’s elites rode the dogma of deregulation, with markets “more attentive to financial interests than to the well-being of people,” in the words of Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. Social democracy shamelessly embraced neoliberalism, believing it would emerge unscathed. The 2008 crisis brought matters to a head—and from that dust, these weeds have grown. The epigones who are now present are also models of technomedieval governance and authoritarianism, besieging liberal democracies.

The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre didn’t emerge out of nowhere—there were precedents. For example, the participatory budgets introduced by the city council under Mayor Tarso Genro (1992–96), a labor lawyer affiliated with the Workers’ Party. At the end of October 1998, during a meeting in Barcelona, Genro told this journalist that, at the time, “the city had a kind of assembly-based system, because [the participatory budgets were the result] of the combination of representative democratic institutions plus professional councils, neighborhoods, unions, which formed what we could call a [unclear] body.” Porto Alegre was making a pact with itself. Twenty-five years later, it continues to do so. The social, political, economic, and technological context is, of course, very different.

Those social movements, NGOs, and left-wing activist groups sought to envision fairer ways of organizing the economy and democracy. The World Social Forum (WSF) presented itself as a response to neoliberalism and the power of large corporations, aspiring to do so on a global scale. Its message was clear: faced with the notion that there was no alternative, another world was possible. “Against the pessimism of reason [neoliberalism], the WSF championed the optimism of the will,” as Antonio Gramsci famously put it.

The experiment ultimately proved unsuccessful, perhaps causing as much—or more—frustration than hope, at least among the most committed or idealistic participants. Over time, the WSF gradually faded, becoming a footnote in the history of failed, though necessary, utopias. As they say today at Caldeira, “the greatest risk is taking no risk at all.” In 2001, they took a risk. They are taking one now. But technology is never neutral, nor innocent. The risks are evident. How can they be mitigated?

With water up to its neck

A year after the Institute opened its physical space—initially around 4,000 square metres—the 2020 pandemic sent everyone home. This prolonged hibernation could have ended the project. But the opposite happened: the pandemic and the sudden need for remote work confirmed that the technological commitment of its founders was, and would remain, strategic in the years to come. Caldeira doubled down on it. After the impact of COVID-19 subsided, another shock arrived in 2024—just as brutal, if not more so—in the form of floods. And it wasn’t just the Institute that was affected: the marks showing how high the water rose—more than two metres—are still visible everywhere. The entire city, and practically the entire state, suffered the consequences of the worst natural disaster in Brazilian history, and one of the most severe in Latin America.

Between April and May 2024, relentless downpours left 185 dead. More than 81,400 people had to be accommodated in shelters—and there are still over 300 shelters in operation. Nearly 600,000 people were displaced, 806 injured, and 23 remain missing. Two million people—the state has a population of about 11.2 million—were affected in some way. Ninety-five percent of the municipalities declared a state of emergency or calamity. For weeks, the waters flooded the basements and cellars of buildings where works of art and other heritage items were stored, many of which were irretrievably lost. Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed. The Great Flood struck Rio Grande do Sul once again.

But even under these conditions, Porto Alegre could not escape its fate as the southernmost city in the Global South. On the same Google Trends scale, the floods caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and those in Rio de Janeiro show very different levels of interest. The former dominate: no other comparable disaster in the 21st century has generated such global media attention. In contrast, the floods in Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro register high search volumes within Brazil, but their global impact is far more modest.

The comparison highlights how public interest skyrockets when a disaster commands the international media spotlight—as in New Orleans—and remains subdued when headlines are primarily regional. The media, and now social networks, construct and destroy messages, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan.

The devastation, however, was enormous—unprecedented. The World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean estimated that the disaster caused approximately $16 billion in economic losses. The emotional toll on the population, which is heavier the more vulnerable they are, can never be fully measured.

Eighteen months later, the city is still struggling to recover and preparing for similar future shocks: climate projections indicate that what happened in 2024—the culmination of years of extreme weather events—could become five times more frequent and 20% more intense. Everyone is committed to the reconstruction: local, state, and federal governments, businesses, civil society, universities, and volunteers.

The fracture between PT and Bolsonaro factions

Once again, in a country that, at least from the outside, appears divided between PT members and Bolsonaro supporters, Rio Grande do Sul and Porto Alegre are attempting to establish themselves as a possible middle ground. The state’s governor, Eduardo Leite, 40, who was exceptionally re-elected for a second term, is no stranger to this approach and is currently evaluating his chances of running as the PSD’s candidate in the October 2026 presidential elections. He has a remarkable personal history and political magnetism.

“What I want to help do is find an alternative path between Lula and Bolsonaro. This radical polarization is causing us many problems. Social media is undoubtedly fueling it, but I think we want and need to move things to a much more peaceful place, where conflicts can exist, but without each side trying to destroy those who are different,” he told this publication.

The task is almost Herculean, as is the reconstruction of the city and the state. But is a compromise between the two extremes truly possible? Could the Caldeira experience and the so-called Pacto Alegre (2018), which underpins the cooperation that made the Institute possible, have a political impact that breaks the current dynamic? Has the spirit of debate and the utopian vision behind the World Social Forum—which once made Porto Alegre a global beacon of social thought—simply transformed into a soulless technological utopia, or does it still hold much further potential?

Carolina Cavalheiro, Head of Business and Community Development at the Institute, doesn’t believe that “Porto Alegre has simply traded one utopia for another.” But she does recognize a thread that connects very different eras: “The ability to bring together diverse actors around a purpose with international resonance.” Previously, this took the form of a “large space for encounter and debate [the World Social Forum],” she continues, but today it is expressed “in the creation of an environment where talent chooses to stay, grow, and innovate, connecting opportunities, education, research, and the market.”

But tech hubs exist everywhere, often more globally connected or with equal—or even greater—funding and talent than those in Porto Alegre. So what does the city contribute?

“The social dimension,” replies Josep Miquel Piqué. “The use of technology for social purposes.” He cites an example: the public Wi-Fi network installed in the Morro de Cruz community—one of the city’s most disadvantaged areas—by Procempa, the municipal technology company.

“Porto Alegre,” Piqué continues, “has always been mindful of this dimension; the question is how it has addressed it.” Now it does so through innovation, after a history of intense “social debate.” In 2018, the Pacto Alegre crystallized into an ecosystem that accelerates and fosters collective projects. “The word that defines the city’s current moment is collaboration,” insists Pedro Valério.

Piqué adds that what links the current spirit of the city with that of the Forum years is “the capacity for agreement.” “The Pacto Alegre,” he continues, “has managed to unite the economy and society to promote common projects in a practical way, with a strong spirit of social agreement and dialogue. Businesses finance it, but universities are the leaders and act as neutral and inclusive agents, combining the economic and social dimensions.”

It is the universities, therefore, that must “lead the necessary reflection on the impact of new technologies.” Only through ethical and philosophical reflection on today’s challenges will it be possible to consolidate the social dimension that connects Porto Alegre in 2001 with Porto Alegre in 2026, however far apart they may be. And in this field, a key figure could be another Catalan closely linked to the city: Dr. Joaquim Clotet, former rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS).