Paradigm or paradox? The ‘cumbersome impasse’ of the participatory turn in Brazilian urban planning

• Published in: Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Scotland), 2019-02, Vol.56 (2), p.271-287
• Main Authors: Friendly, Abigail, Stiphany, Kristine
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cities; Citizen participation; Critical commentary; Decision making; Development strategies; Housing; Inequality; Insurgency; Intellectuals; Land; Land division; Land reform; Leverage; Misalignment; Paradigms; Policy making; Political participation; Politics; Public participation; Reforms; Rural urban migration; Segregation; Social exclusion; Transformation; Urban areas; Urban planning; Urbanism
• ISSN: 0042-0980; 1360-063X
• DOI: 10.1177/0042098018768748

The Brazilian urban reform movement expanded citizen participation in decision-making processes through a policy environment motivated by a right to the city (RTC), a collective development strategy for political transformation. Yet recent events evidence that social exclusion and spatial segregation remain dominant features of the Brazilian city. These contradictions have led planning scholars and practitioners to grapple with misalignment between the reform movement’s paradigmatic goals and its paradoxical failures. We build upon this genre of thinking to assess critical areas of paradigm and paradox in Brazilian planning – insurgent urbanism, informality and knowledge – each of which is rooted in the lesser-understood concept of autogestão for improving the equity of land division through urban planning. Although not all inclusive of the issues faced by Brazilian cities, these three categories were selected for best representing how Brazil’s participatory turn established a range of paradigmatic and paradoxical conditions that can help us to understand cities in Brazil and beyond and might better leverage autogestão in the future. 巴西城市改革运动通过政策环境促进了公民参与决策过程，该政策环境是受到城市权利（RTC）的启发，RTC是政治转型的集体发展战略。然而最近的事件表明，社会排斥和空间隔离仍然是巴西城市的主要特征。这些矛盾促使规划学者和从业者们努力克服改革运动的范式目标与其矛盾的失败之间的错位。我们在这种思维的基础上评估巴西规划中的范式和悖论（叛乱型城市化、非正规性和知识）的每一个关键方面。这些范式和悖论的根源在于，旨在通过城市规划改善土地分割公平性的“自治（autogestão）”这一概念不太被人理解。尽管未将巴西城市所面临的所有问题都包括在内，但选择的这三个类别最具代表性，能说明巴西的参与转向如何建立了一系列范例和矛盾情形。这些范式和矛盾情形可以帮助我们了解巴西及其他地区的城市，并可能在未来更好地利用“自治（autogestão）”这一概念。