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

Urban Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Friendly ◽  
Kristine Stiphany

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.1 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.

Author(s):  
Robert Procter ◽  
Miguel Arana-Catania ◽  
Felix-Anselm van Lier ◽  
Nataliya Tkachenko ◽  
Yulan He ◽  
...  

The development of democratic systems is a crucial task as confirmed by its selection as one of the Millennium Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. In this article, we report on the progress of a project that aims to address barriers, one of which is information overload, to achieving effective direct citizen participation in democratic decision-making processes. The main objectives are to explore if the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning can improve citizens? experience of digital citizen participation platforms. Taking as a case study the ?Decide Madrid? Consul platform, which enables citizens to post proposals for policies they would like to see adopted by the city council, we used NLP and machine learning to provide new ways to (a) suggest to citizens proposals they might wish to support; (b) group citizens by interests so that they can more easily interact with each other; (c) summarise comments posted in response to proposals; (d) assist citizens in aggregating and developing proposals. Evaluation of the results confirms that NLP and machine learning have a role to play in addressing some of the barriers users of platforms such as Consul currently experience.


ZARCH ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 228
Author(s):  
David Arredondo Garrido

En ciudades con un importante patrimonio histórico son cada vez más frecuentes los procesos de homogeneización del paisaje urbano. Una dinámica que conduce a la transformación de determinados entornos históricos en espacios en donde apenas queda lugar para la singularidad, las actividades no reguladas o la participación ciudadana. Este estudio propone analizar una serie de iniciativas desarrolladas en la última década en centros de cuatro ciudades españolas, concretamente en Sevilla, Barcelona, Madrid y Zaragoza. Proyectos que se apoyan en la agricultura y la jardinería urbanas para sortear la banalización imperante, creando espacios para la cultura, las relaciones sociales y la imaginación. Pese a las dificultades en su gestión y su repercusión minoritaria, estas intervenciones ejemplifican un modo de reconfigurar el paisaje urbano, planteando esquemas de activación, percepción activa y participación en lugares centrales de la ciudad en proceso de abandono, donde las actividades agrícolas y jardineras adquieren un peso importante.PALABRAS CLAVE: paisaje urbano, acupuntura urbana, agricultura urbana, participación ciudadana, derecho a la ciudad.Processes of homogenization of the urban landscape are becoming more frequent in cities with an important historical heritage. A dynamic that leads to the transformation of certain historical environments in spaces where there is hardly any room for uniqueness, unregulated activities or public participation. This study aims to analyse a number of initiatives developed in the last decade in four Spanish city centres, particularly in Seville, Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza. Projects that are using urban agriculture and gardening to escape form current banality, creating spaces for culture, social relations and imagination. Despite the difficulties in its management and its minor impact, these interventions exemplify a way to reshape urban landscape, through schemes of activation, active perception and participation in abandoned places in the city, where agricultural activities and gardening are now playing an important role.KEYWORDS: urban landscape, urban acupuncture, urban agriculture, citizen participation, right to the city.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Francisco Jose Chamizo Nieto ◽  
Nuria Nebot Gomez De Salazar ◽  
Carlos J. Rosa-Jimenez

The most conventional systems in the Urban Planning practice leave out needs and real social demands through inefficient management models in many cases. Nowadays there is a social, professional and institutional demand to transform these models into new ways of thinking and planning the city that are closer to its inhabitants. In fact, there is a high social involvement of people that are helping or developing activities in favour of their local communities. However, this social activism is not visible nor recognised as the one made by regulated associations. Undoubtedly, the use of new technologies offers a framework of opportunity in these new ways of ”making the city”, as well as it becomes a new area of work and research.In this sense, there are many experiences that incorporate technology as a resource to promote citizen participation in the management of cities. However, only some of them are effective and achieve the goal of becoming a useful tool for citizens. In the city of Malaga, there are already some digital tools at the service of citizenship, although these require a process of revision and updating that allows optimizing existing resources and increasing their impact as a participation tool. As a first step, it is necessary to identify the agents and social initiatives of existing participation in the city.The objective of this project is to create an interactive digital platform that shows the city of Malaga from a real social perspective, as it makes visible and map the emerging non regulated movements, neighbourhood initiatives and new urban trends with low visibility. Finally, the aim is to create a tool for collectives, associations, administrations and other urban agents to promote synergies and relationships among all of them. The incorporation of all of them is essential for the success of the platform as a participation tool. For this, a methodology of actions is established, and it begins with the identification of possible agents and the way of interaction with each one of them. The digital tool that is used is based on the use of geographic location systems.This article collects the results of the first phase of the research project that includes a methodological proposal for mapping the real social activist reality in cities and a functional test of the digital platform created for this. Likewise, an evaluation of the experience and possible improvements to be incorporated in the successive phases of the project is advanced


2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Sara Nikolić

Abstract Colourful zigzags, arcade game motifs, geometric figures, pseudo-frames of windows and even infantile drawings of flora and fauna – those are just some of the visible symptoms of the aesthetical and urbanistic chaotic condition also known as Polish pasteloza. One of the most common readings is that the excuse of thermal insulation is being (ab)used in order to radically erase the urbanistic, cultural and political heritage of Polish People’s Republic (PPR) from the city landscape. On the other hand, inhabitants of ‘pastelized’ housing estates claim to be satisfied not only with the insulation but also with their role in decision-making processes. A sense of alienation from one’s home seems to have gone away, together with the centralized state administration, and it is being replaced by citizen participation. The possibility of vindication of pasteloza’s ‘crimes against aesthetics’ will be deliberated in this paper – in order to pave a path for more complex understanding of this phenomenon that could offer a solution for achieving a compromise between aesthetics and civic participation in post-transition processes.


Urbanisation ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
Aarathi Ganga

This article explores the nature of urban citizenship among fishers in Kerala, one of the state’s most marginalised communities, by analysing their participation in a centrally sponsored slum rehabilitation programme—Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY)—in Vizhinjam, Thiruvananthapuram. The ‘right to participate’ is considered an integral part of the ‘right to the city’, and the inability of the fishing community to participate in the decision-making processes of urban development programmes that directly affect their lives reveals the exclusionary nature of their citizenship. In a state that is renowned for its achievements in human development and governance, the fishing community continues to be marginalised and lack collective power to influence policies. Participatory meetings in such contexts become tokenistic, and their transformative capacity is undermined. The inefficiency of participatory meetings organised under RAY also stems from the powerlessness of local governments to alter urban programmes designed by national governments.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-43
Author(s):  
K. V ChIKRIZOVA ◽  
A. G GOLOVIN

The article is an attempt to rethink the interaction between urban communities, Urban governance bodies, architects and town planners in matters of urban development strategy for the case of Ulyanovsk city.A number of problems, such as low functional appeal of the central space, the lack of urban development strategies, formal participation in the development and adoption of urban development programs requires a new approach in the current socio-economic environment. Entering the setting of project objectives for the development of the central city area is not possible without an analysis of the current situation, the development of urban planning strategies and discuss, which is difficulty realizable within the existing administrative structure. Consolidation of efforts to make decisions on urban planning strategies available with the participation of stakeholders: Urban governance bodies, architects, people, and creating an environment of interaction: social complex, the Center for Urban Initiatives (CUI). As part of the CUI is to develop, negotiate and influence decisions on urban development strategies and integration in the development of the city and the creation of a comfortable urban environment.Create a full environment for the public and professional discussion on urban prospects can solve some urgent problems of the city.


2021 ◽  
pp. 15-19
Author(s):  
Yuriy L. Chepelevskyy

The article identifies the main aspects of strategic planning of the city image. In Ukraine as a democratic country, where the people are the main source of power, strategic planning, in particular in urban planning should be carried out for the people and together with the people. The stages of strategic planning are identified. They represent the relevant tasks, which should be accomplished on the basis of local public, business, and industrial organizations, thus obtaining comprehensive information about their problems and needs. The mechanisms used in the foreign practice of strategic planning are analyzed (on the example of Barcelona (Spain) and Hamburg (Germany). Community participation in strategic planning of Barcelona (Spain) and Hamburg (Germany) demonstrates its important role in Barcelona’s acquisition of the City of the Future Award (2015) and Hamburg’s high 23rd place in the 2010 World Quality of Life Ranking. The paper establishes that the cooperation of cities and society is the ground for the successful strategy; the community is a full participant in strategic planning. The main thing in the development strategy is to reach a consensus between the government-business-residents on a common vision of such development. In Germany, the planning law provides for community participation in all planning processes, and the entire population of the city can participate in the process of resolving issues using the Internet platform. Ensuring community participation in the form of partnership at all stages - both in the development process and in the implementation and monitoring of results will help optimize the process of regulating urban planning in our country.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Friendly

Brazilian urban social movements have played a key role in bringing about change in urban policy since the 1980s and in light of the widespread protests across the country in June 2013. This insurgency and the urban reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s exemplify waves of mobilization and demobilization, signaling positive change at the level of praxis. More recent events have highlighted challenges for Brazil’s political left. Os movimentos sociais urbanos brasileiros tem desempenhado um papel chave na mudança da política urbana desde os anos 80 e em vista dos mega-protestos espalhados pelo país de junho de 2013. Esta insurgência e o movimento de reforma urbana dos anos 80 e 90 exemplificam ondas de mobilização e desmobilização, sinalizando mudanças positivas ao nível da praxis. Eventos mais recentes têm destacado desafios para a esquerda política brasileira.


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