Planejamento urbano

O presente artigo tem como objetivos (i) mostrar como a experiência de revitalização do Bairro do Recife foi desvirtuada, aproximando-se da tendência de city marketing, entendida como a aceleração da taxa de transformação de certas localidades, com ênfase especulativa sobre imóveis e grandes obras de renomados arquitetos, com importantes repercussões em termos de trânsito de veículos e fluxos de pessoas, e (ii) questionar sobre a legitimidade de projetos que, embora institucionalmente aprovados, comprometem as características de determinadas estruturas espaciais urbanas, como é o caso dos centros históricos.

The current developments in Rio de Janeiro in the wake of the 2014 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games have accelerated the transition from a hybridurban order to a new urban order of intensified neoliberalization and commodification. This transition is a complex and contradictory process that entails both rollback and rollout features of neoliberalism, as well as a permanent restructuring of sociospatial relations and political arrangements. By discussing the on going policies and politics of urban restructuring, we examine the creative destruction of urban structures, institutional arrangements, and regulations of urban space with the transformation of 3 sites in Rio de Janeiro — Barra da Tijuca, the port district, and the South Zone. The process of variegated neoliberalization generates new modes of production and reproduction, which threaten the principles of democratic governance and universalization of rights to the city. 

The critical geography scholarship on mega-events mostly adopts the framework of accumulation by dispossession, highlighting the disruptive legacies such as displacement and gentrification wrought upon host cities. Though the critique is largely correct, it has failed to capture the complex layers of historical and institutional contexts that underlie urban social change in mega-event cities. This article makes a case for broadening our analytical perspective by introducing the concept of aspirational urbanism, which refers to the diverse practices and discourses launched by state and business elites in an attempt to remake their cities bourgeois and world-class. Aspirational urbanism underscores the gap between global aspirations and local realities and draws our attention to the ad hoc economic, political, and cultural strategies used by state and business elites to bridge the gap. The concept is particularly useful for studying transformations in mega-event cities in the Global South, because these are the places marked by sharp contrasts between global city ambitions and developing-country realities. By way of introducing this special issue on urban transformations and spectacles in Brazil, this article presents a comparative analysis of the Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Beijing 2008 Olympics to examine how aspirational urbanism unfolded differently in the 2 cities.

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.