Shared Grammars, Individual Desires: Participatory Planning and Slum Upgrading in Brazil

By Gabriel Duarte

In Brazil, for the past three to four decades, planning and design have continuously had their relevance in the broader social and political debates weakened. After the demise of modern master planning and physical-behavioral determinism, the scientific ability to somehow foresee the future that planners and designers imagined to posses proved to be flawed in many cases. 

The amalgamation of planning and design has not yet been fully understood as to form a new repertoire that allows more effective operations in the urban realm, not even in Brazil, where planning and design were merged in the professional statute of the architect. Under the light of this disciplinary crisis – at least from a Brazilian point of view – this article makes an effort to map and analyze how the technocratic (top-down) and the social-political (bottom-up) dimensions of urbanism can somehow be reconciled. And rethinking public participation is key to this revision.

The emergence (and urgency) of informality requires the formulation of new methodological agendas with larger impacts on how planning and design disciplines operate in contemporary metropolises, especially in developing nations. In this context, it must be clarified that this article does not advocate for neither the bottom-up nor the top-down. Yet, it understands that this debate has deceitfully taken urban disciplines to these two extremes so far.

There is a tendency to confuse participation with public consultation, which are conceptually divergent. It is deceptive to understand participation as a synonym to consultation, and accept that whatever a given community voices out is a solemn truth. Society in general – and some politicians, planners and designer as well – tend to blindly stress the values of exclusively ‘listening’ as means to compose a list of demands for all sorts of reasons: from political promises to easily graspable rhetoric. It is also an illusory idea that top-down technical knowledge is able to individually make all the right decisions, being impermeable to any local input.

Negotiations on participatory processes tend to fluctuate towards these extremes, most of the times without yielding any positive results. One of the most pressing challenges in implementing participation in design and planning is precisely to find the most efficient ratio between local knowledge/demands and technique. This can only be achieved if participation shifts from mere consultation to a process of establishing effective channels of communication among all the stakeholders involved. Extremely polarized discussions evolve into unfruitful disputes simply because the parties involved are unable to understand each other.

 This article aims at amplifying the discussion towards the necessary revisions of the roles that planners and designers play in moderating and enabling conversations in the context of urban regeneration projects. It derives propositional hypotheses and critical arguments on a new sort of moderated participation from two recently completed urban regenerations plans by the author in coastal slums in Niterói, in Rio de Janeiro’s metropolitan region: the Canto de Itaipú and Jurujuba fishermen communities. Both are located in environmentally and politically sensitive areas, where imprecise planning regulations, illegal occupation and the clash between traditional fishing and offshore oil drilling led to severe urban decay.

BRACKET [takes action]

Housing Resistant Forms of Life

Housing Resistant Forms of Life

By Hamed Khosravi
Open House

Open House

By Matthew Mazzotta
Mobile Loitering: public infrastructure for a highly gendered urban context

Mobile Loitering: public infrastructure for a highly gendered urban context

By Mariam Kamara, Elizabeth Golden
The Space of the Commons: Dheisheh Refugee Camp

The Space of the Commons: Dheisheh Refugee Camp

By Alison Hugill, Dan Dorocic
See that my grave is kept clean: ritual continuity & spatial resistance along Futenma's inverted periphery

See that my grave is kept clean: ritual continuity & spatial resistance along Futenma's inverted periphery

By Steven Chodoriwsky
A Subject of Action

A Subject of Action

By Albert Pope
Place de la Republique in Paris

Place de la Republique in Paris

By TVK - Trévelo & Viger-Kohler Architectes Urbanistes
THE IMAGE OF THE SQUARE: Redefining Citizenship by Design

THE IMAGE OF THE SQUARE: Redefining Citizenship by Design

By Samaa Elimam
Delirious actions: gender tactics in public space

Delirious actions: gender tactics in public space

By Serafina Amoroso

ELASTIC COMMEMORATION

ELASTIC COMMEMORATION

By Guy Königstein
BREAKING INTO THE CITY Urban explorers' architectural posture

BREAKING INTO THE CITY Urban explorers' architectural posture

By Michael Cook
Off the Wall

Off the Wall

By Katherine Jenkins, Parker Sutton
Cultivate Collective

Cultivate Collective

By De Peter Yi
FAS: Architectural Activism

FAS: Architectural Activism

By FAS- Foreign Architects Switzerland
What a body can do: the political as generator of a common spatiality

What a body can do: the political as generator of a common spatiality

By Lucia Jalon Oyarzun
Bronx is Up, WTC is down: paraphrasing Leonard Bernstein. A public service guerilla action for Architecture League’s Make a Difference in Two Days

Bronx is Up, WTC is down: paraphrasing Leonard Bernstein. A public service guerilla action for Architecture League’s Make a Difference in Two Days

By Austin+Mergold With James Bowman, Denise Ramzy, Sally Reynolds
Contested Energies

Contested Energies

By Stephen Mueller, Ersela Kripa
Spaces of Conflict

Spaces of Conflict

By Lori A. Brown
The Empty City

The Empty City

By Martin Sztyk
SLANTED MEMORIAL

SLANTED MEMORIAL

By Jin Young Song
Next page » Loading