The Place of Social Citizenship and Property Rights in Brazil’s ‘Right to the City’ Debate

Abigail Friendly

doi:10.1017/s1474746419000435

Abstract

There has been considerable attention on Brazil’s experience in applying the right to the city, influencing the urban reform movement and subsequent legislation including the 1988 Constitution and the 2001 Statute of the City. While much is known about Brazil’s urban transformations, this article views this trajectory within debates on social citizenship, expanding the focus to show that property is integral to this debate. Through the lens of social citizenship, property rights and insurgency, this article traces Brazil’s right to the city debate through a focus on three issues: (1) the rights dimension of such debates; (2) the role of the social function of property in urban legislation; and (3) the role of insurgent planning evident in urban social movements. While property rights and land rights are often distanced from debates on social citizenship, the Brazil case provides evidence in which the two are clearly intertwined.

Highlights

The right to participate in decisions producing urban space has been taken up social movements, including in Brazil (Mayer, 2012)
The Brazilian case is significant given a disjuncture between progressive urban policies asserting the right to the city and the social function of property, and the reality of unequal urban development producing social exclusion
While much is known about Brazil’s urban transformations and experiences regarding the right to the city, this article views this trajectory within debates on social citizenship (Marshall, 1950; Fernandes, 2007a; Earle, 2017) and elaborates on the connection between citizenship and land (Davy, 2012; Brøgger, 2019)

Summary

Abigail Friendly

There has been considerable attention on Brazil’s experience in applying the right to the city, influencing the urban reform movement and subsequent legislation including the 1988 Constitution and the 2001 Statute of the City. In Brazil, such ideas helped to inspire the rights and legal emphasis among the urban reform movement and the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) This process eventually led to the approval of a ‘citizens’ Constitution in 1988, including two articles on urban policy, reaffirming the social function of property, or the obligation for land uses contributing to the common good (Ondetti, 2016). The rights-based approach of the urban reform movement led, to the 2001 approval of the Statute of the City (Estatuto da Cidade) In recent years, such activities have become bottom-up, starting with the Jornadas de Junho protests in June 2013 as people claimed their rights to the city (Friendly, 2017). This focus on these three facets, drawing on evidence from Brazil, shows that property and land rights are integral to debates on social citizenship

The rights dimension of social citizenship

The social function of property in urban legislation