Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre invented a democratic innovation that spread to 3,000 cities worldwide and then struggled to apply it at home. Participatory budgeting—allowing citizens to directly allocate portions of municipal spending—was launched here in 1989 by the Workers' Party (PT) and became the most successful export in Brazilian political history. The World Bank studied it. New York adopted a version. The idea traveled further than the city that created it.

Porto Alegre sits at the northern end of the Lagoa dos Patos, South America's largest lagoon, where the Guaíba River creates a freshwater port that connected Brazil's southernmost state to Atlantic trade. Açórean Portuguese settlers arrived in the 1740s, and subsequent waves of German and Italian immigration gave Rio Grande do Sul a European demographic character distinct from tropical Brazil. The gaucho culture—cattle ranching, mate tea (chimarrão), churrasco barbecue—is the regional identity.

The economy reflects southern Brazil's agricultural power. Rio Grande do Sul is a major producer of soybeans, rice, and wine (the Serra Gaúcha wine region produces 90% of Brazilian wine). Porto Alegre processes and ships this output while hosting significant manufacturing: Gerdau (Latin America's largest steel producer) and Dell's Brazilian operations are headquartered here.

The 2001 World Social Forum established Porto Alegre as the anti-Davos—the gathering point for global civil society opposing neoliberal economics. "Another world is possible" became the slogan, coined in the same city that demonstrated another democracy was possible.

Catastrophic flooding in 2024 devastated Porto Alegre and surrounding areas in Rio Grande do Sul, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and causing billions in damage. The floods exposed infrastructure vulnerabilities in a city built on low-lying terrain beside the lagoon.

Porto Alegre's contribution—participatory democracy—may outlast the physical city that invented it.