Movimentos sociais

Rights-based urban social movements have proliferated since the mid-1970s, but our understanding of their real impacts remains insufficient. Using the housing movements in São Paulo as an example, the article demonstrates both the limits and the strengths of the rights-based approach. It argues that housing movements in São Paulo must be understood in the global context of the coexistence of two contradictory trajectories: the neoliberal urbanism and the rights-based movements. While the rights-based approach has yet to bring fundamental changes to the unequal housing distribution in Brazil, it provides the housing movements with new legal and institutional devices to justify their actions and influence the policy process, thus contributing to the unusual resilience and scale of the movements. The article reveals that the gap between rights promised and rights delivered can be utilized as a political opportunity for facilitating collective mobilization, contesting neoliberalism, and advancing new conceptions of citizenship.

A process is recognized as collaborative when it demonstrates the involvement of multiple stakeholders who are mobilized to interact and negotiate horizontally in order to achieve common objectives. Although efforts can be made to make a process collaborative, a governance process is situated in particular histories and geographies, and collectively shared cultures, norms, and behaviors can help or hinder the emergence of inclusive democratic practices. As a result of broader urban reforms that have been occurring in Brazil over the last 20 years, and particularly a shift in the institutional arrangement of planning in Curitiba, the 2014 Curitiba Master Plan was developed within a more democratic framework, with the engagement of several governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. Despite adopting a more collaborative approach to planning, this plan is as generic as the 2004 Curitiba Master Plan it replaced, which was proposed within a technocratic framework. If the 2004 and 2014 institutional arrangements and processes were so different, why did they achieve similar results? To answer this question, this study investigates which elements influence the endurance of established practices in urban planning processes. The basic assumption is that the final product of a planning process is heavily influenced by existing and long-lasting institutions, which carry internal beliefs and procedures into new planning approaches. The evidence pre-sented in this study shows that path dependence on ideas, behaviors, and actions has been perpetuating planning practices that have been established in Curitiba for decades.

Despite the broad celebration of Brazil’s urban reform movement, recent events in Brazil have called attention to a paradox focused on the disappointing results of this movement to deal with Brazil’s complex urban context.Taking this “impasse” as a starting point, this article focuses on the role of politics and its relationship to economic interests in urban development in which much decision making around urban policy takes place to understand why Brazil’s progressive legislation has not succeeded in creating a more just and equitable urban environment. Using a case study of the city of Niterói, I show that patterns of state and nonstate actors are connected through both formal and informal relationships, and connections between public and private actors have a considerable impact on urban politics and policies. Focusing on the limits of participatory processes in Niterói, I call attention to the contradictions of participatory planning in Brazil.

In June 2013, Brazil witnessed one of its largest protest movements in history when more than 1 million Brazilians marched on city streets to demand improvements to urban life. As the epicenters of protests, cities have become an important location for examining the demands, politics, and social change strategies of contemporary citizenship. In this article, we analyze the evolution of Brazil’s protest movement. Based on participant observation, archival research, secondary data, and thick description, we conduct a historical event analysis. By examining the narratives, practices, and forms that emerged in Brazil’s 2013 protests, we argue that contemporary urban citizenship is transformed in important ways in response to both global and local changes. Policymakers and planners need to be prepared to deal with the realities of urbanization, and we offer perspectives on how citizenship can better accommodate new growth and societal changes.

Brazilian housing movements often use the slogan “a home is an entryway to all other rights,” which embodies the belief that a secure home is just the beginning of claiming the rights of citizenship. These movements rejoiced when President Lula da Silva came to office in the 2000s and enacted social programs meant to reshape the relationship between citizens, the state, and the market. But how did reform of social programs prove to be empowering of individuals and transformative in urban governance? In this paper, I evaluate how the Minha Casa Minha Vida Entidades Program, based on the principles of auto-gestão (self-management), shaped feelings of self-efficacy and civic participation of residents at the time of construction and beyond. Through interviews and surveys with residents in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador, I find their experiences led to feelings of empowerment and many sought to work collaboratively to make further claims of the state. These individual and community-level transformations may also be the start of greater movement toward the right to the city across Brazil.

This research note seeks to update our understanding of the factors that influence shifts in social movement strategies. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, I assess the role of crisis in whether and how social movements reshape their strategies and perhaps redefine their fight for the right to the city. Though previous research has shown the importance of political opportunities and ideology for social movement strategies, we need to reassess these variables and the direction of change in times of crisis. Using the case of the Union of Housing Movements in São Paulo, I find that though the tactics of the movement responded to a conflictual relationship at the federal level and a need to meet immediate needs of members, the ideology of the movement provided the structure for continuing to engage in inclusionary governance strategies and renewed energy for transformational change.

A questão urbana no Brasil – traduzida como o direito à cidade e à moradia digna – nas três últimas décadas passou por intensas transformações tanto em seus marcos regulatórios quanto na forma de envolvimento das diferentes instituições e sujeitos localizados na sociedade e no aparato estatal. Desde os debates que antecederam a Assembleia Nacional Constituinte na década de 1980, a mobilização tem sido intensa e marcada por tensões entre os diversos atores. Busca-se demonstrar as incorporações de diferentes sujeitos por meio de processos democráticos participativos, como conselhos e conferências, os resultados obtidos por meio da consolidação de legislação específica e os limites atuais da Política Urbana.