Brazilian Urban Policy Research Articles

Integração de Áreas Verdes na política urbana brasileira: desafios e perspectivas

Effectively integrating green areas into urban development in Brazil has proven to be a significant challenge. These areas are often treated as one-off solutions, aligned with specific interests, rather than as an integral part of sustainable urban planning. Although the idea of an integrated green infrastructure seems promising, it often clashes with other urban dilemmas, and thus remains a utopian aspiration. In this article, we analyzed the gaps in green area planning and management in the Brazilian urban policy, exploring its evolution and the challenges faced from the 1930s to the present. In addition, we critically evaluate existing public policies and propose recommendations to improve the integration of green areas into urban contexts. The research includes a synthetic comparative analysis of successful international practices and the Brazilian scenario. We adopt a dialectical approach and use methodological procedures based on the indirect documentation technique, employing sources from official agencies with legislation on green areas, in addition to a literature review. The results show the persistent difficulties in incorporating green spaces into the urban structure, which are essential for sustainable urban development. We conclude that the integration of these areas faces renewed challenges, camouflaged with new discourses and paradigms of sustainability, besides various resistances in their practical application.

Brazilian Urban Policy: Sustainability as a Driving Force

Defining global themes such as Urban Policy, Urban Sustainability, and even the Right to the City (RTTC) is fundamental to stimulating and establishing a continuous dialogue with the scientific community, mainly in the social sciences. Thus, understanding the dynamics around the scope of urban sustainability requires an analysis that is focused on multiple global realities. Taking a holistic view of Brazilian Urban Policy, this entry looks at the historical contexts that make urban sustainability the driving force behind this policy. In addition, an interdisciplinary consideration of urban sustainability is proposed using an analysis that is based on the connection between urban policies and social functions that reflect the idea of a sustainable city. The results of this analysis also point to the need for a continuous debate on the subject that primarily promotes new discoveries; this is so that the driving force of urban policy can gain new meanings and new guidelines can be implemented.

Neighborhood Impact Assessment an urban sustainability instrument

The Neighborhood Impact Assessment (NIA) [1]is an important instrument of the Brazilian Urban Policy enacted in the City Statute, Federal Law 10.257/2001. Considered by the national academic literature as a relevant instrument for local urban environmental management. However, in Brazil, the understanding that the environmental and the urban are part of the same context is not yet a reality within the local public administration sectors, with a deep disconnection of management and governance between the urban and environmental departments. The objective of this work was to analyze the application of NIA in medium-sized cities in the state of São Paulo and to evaluate its contribution to the local urban environmental management of these cities. We also intend to evaluate the NIA integration with other sectors of local public management such as the environment, urban mobility, social housing, etc. As a methodology, we used NIA Process Components, verifying the absence or presence in the urban laws of four (04) medium-sized cities in the state of São Paulo. We also interviewed civil servants from the environmental and urban sectors, supplementing information that was absent in laws and official documents. The results reveal that most municipalities do not have a specific law that regulates the NIA, and Master Plans, Land Use and Occupation Law regulate this instrument. Civil servants emphasize the weaknesses and strengths of the instruments. As potentialities of this instrument, they observed public participation, increased state control in environmentally sensitive areas, greater urban-environmental compensation mechanisms, and so on. Weaknesses signalize were: conflicts involving urban land subdivision, interference of the real estate market in the use and occupation of urban land, changes in the Master Plans by the city councilman aiming to meet the interests of private financial capital. The four cities, which are part of the Case Studies, have not yet effectively incorporated elements of climate change in their local governance. Issues related to social housing, expansion of slums, occupation of protected environmental areas by poor populations are still the most urgent priorities in these cities, as well as in many Latin American cities. The improvement and advancement of the articulation of the urban and environmental sectors in Brazilian cities must require thinking about better scientific methodological and governmental improvements.
 
 [1] Brazilian authors often use the terminology in English “Neighborhood Impact Study”. However, we chose to use “Neighborhood Impact Assessment” according to (Abiko & Barreiros, 2014) to facilitate the understanding of the instrument for the international audience, as it has similarities with the Impact Assessment. However, in Brazil, the NIA is known as the “Estudo de Impacto de Vizinhança”.

Multilevel urban policy mobilities through the City Statute: the spreading of Brazilian urban federal law

ABSTRACT The City Statute is a legal framework that provides Brazilian urban policy with another dynamic. It guides urban policies across the national territory, and hasgained international prominence at a moment when Latin American countries became policy exporters. This paper takes the City Statute to discuss multilevel urban policy mobilities between international and subnational levels, analyzing how its guidelines and contents spread across Brazilian and Latin American territories. The findings suggest that the City Statute has been simultaneously disseminated and questioned at different levels. It is a significant case study for understanding multilevel and South-South policy mobility.

Instrumentos da política urbana brasileira em planos diretores: Campos dos Goytacazes-RJ 2008 & 2020

In Brazil, the Federal Constitution of 1988 instituted an urban policy that determines the mandatory city plan for a city with more than 20,000 inhabitants. The City Statute, which regulated the Constitution, established that the city plans must be reviewed within ten years. The 2008 Campos dos Goytacazes city plan went through a review process and in 2020 the new law was approved. The objective of this research is to verify the insertion of the Brazilian urban policy and its instruments in the urban planning of Campos dos Goytacazes. In the methodological process, bibliographic and documentary surveys, bibliographic review and comparative analysis were carried out. Regarding the results achieved, the comparative table for checking the insidence of urban policy instruments in the master plans and laws for the use and occupation of land in Campos dos Goytacazes approved in 2008 and 2020 was highlighted. With the analysis of the results it was observed that most instruments are cited in legislation in a bureaucratic manner. In most cases, places in the municipal territory where the instruments were applied were not defined. It is concluded that in the case of Campos dos Goytacazes, as in other Brazilian municipalities, the application of a large part of the urban policy defined at national level did not achieve great insertion in municipal planning. This research is expected to contribute to the municipal management in order to foster a greater discussion and understanding of the technical aspects of the instruments established by law, in the search for a quality city with sustainable ordering.

DESCARACTERIZAÇÃO DA POLÍTICA URBANA NO BRASIL:

Resumo: O artigo aborda o processo de alterações legislativas e institucionais vividas pela Política Urbana brasileira após o impeachment da Presidenta Dilma. Tais alterações são analisadas considerando as contribuições teóricas de Charles Tilly para avaliar processos de desdemocratização, bem como de Avritzer e Rosanvallon. Valendo-se do método hipotético dedutivo, a pesquisa (I) aponta os traços fundamentais da política urbana conformada pela ordem constitucional e Estatuto da Cidade; (ii) analisa a descaracterização da Política Urbana através do esvaziamento de institutos e princípios centrais para tal política pública, tais como o princípio da função social da propriedade e o Plano Diretor; (iii) analisa leis, projetos de lei e alterações institucionais na gestão da política urbana no Brasil a fim de identificar indicadores confiáveis de desdemocratização em curso no país. As conclusões apontam para um momento de inflexão na política urbana brasileira, descaracterizada em seus traços fundamentais, bem como desidratada de mecanismos capazes de democratizar a condução de tal política pública no Brasil.

Cidades saudáveis: novos desafios para o planejamento urbano após 20 anos de Estatuto da Cidade

Social and economic fragilities make parts of the city vulnerable to the dissemination of diseases, such as COVID-19. The promotion of well-being and quality of life requires an understanding of the relationship between urban space and health. The objective of this article is to study, identify and systemize the Brazilian urban policy premises, which subsidizes the development of urban planning for healthy cities. The methodology used in this study was the exploratory documentary research, in-depth reading and systematization of uniterms found in the urban policy documents: City Statute and Metropolis Statute; and in the health policy documents: Law 8.080/1990 and National Health Promotion Policy.This study made it feasible to include concepts of health promotion into urban planning, in line with the recommendation of the World Health Organization that recommends including  health in all policies. Scientific research is needed to support the review of documents and new conceptions considering health promotion as an agenda for the development of urban planning for a healthy and sustainable city.

Beyond local (in)capacity: analyzing the implementation of a federally induced urban policy in Brazil

The article analyzes the capacity production of a Brazilian urban policy (Program of Acceleration of Growth - Slum Upgrading, PAC-UAP), whose implementation flaws are commonly associated with municipal governments shortcomings, even though its interventions involve a multiplicity of actors. Three analytical and empirical aspects are considered: (i) the need to expand knowledge on state capacity in policies implemented by a network of actors; (ii) the relevance of the debate of policy capacity, which refers to the ability of reaching the expected results in a specific public policy; (iii) and the demand to explore federally induced public policies in federations marked by heterogeneous subnational entities. Methodologically, the work develops a case study, complemented by documental analysis and interviews with key stakeholders. The research corroborates studies that emphasize that municipal problems affected the production capacity of PAC-UAP, particularly the lack of adequate human and financial resources. On the other hand, this study innovates when considering that the municipality is, in fact, the node of a network of actors, whose (in)capacity also affects the implementation. Therefore, it might not be possible to attribute only to the municipality the (in)success of this program. The article also reinforces the importance of incorporating organizational and systemic dimensions as explanatory elements, whose challenges can be potentiated when a program design is not adequate to the intrinsic characteristics of a certain public policy.

Beyond local (in)capacity: analyzing the implementation of a federally induced urban policy in Brazil

The article analyzes the capacity production of a Brazilian urban policy (Program of Acceleration of Growth - Slum Upgrading, PAC-UAP), whose implementation flaws are commonly associated with municipal governments shortcomings, even though its interventions involve a multiplicity of actors. Three analytical and empirical aspects are considered: (i) the need to expand knowledge on state capacity in policies implemented by a network of actors; (ii) the relevance of the debate of policy capacity, which refers to the ability of reaching the expected results in a specific public policy; (iii) and the demand to explore federally induced public policies in federations marked by heterogeneous subnational entities. Methodologically, the work develops a case study, complemented by documental analysis and interviews with key stakeholders. The research corroborates studies that emphasize that municipal problems affected the production capacity of PAC-UAP, particularly the lack of adequate human and financial resources. On the other hand, this study innovates when considering that the municipality is, in fact, the node of a network of actors, whose (in)capacity also affects the implementation. Therefore, it might not be possible to attribute only to the municipality the (in)success of this program. The article also reinforces the importance of incorporating organizational and systemic dimensions as explanatory elements, whose challenges can be potentiated when a program design is not adequate to the intrinsic characteristics of a certain public policy.

Climate change and the unsustainable urbanism in the municipality of João Pessoa, PB, Brazil

In the scope of urban space production, Brazilian urban policy, despite pointing out in its guidelines the struggle for the right to the city, seems indifferent to the impacts of real estate speculation on ecosystems. Given the context of the climate emergency, there is an urgent need to align urban and environmental policy for planning cities adapted to climate change. This work presents, based on spatial data from the recent deforestation of the city of João Pessoa, the legal and socioenvironmental characteristics of the urban expansion of the city and how the municipal urban and environmental policy has catalyzed processes of socioenvironmental injustice. It appears that planning and management are limited to following the trends signaled by the real estate market and that pressure ecosystems, especially in the southern portion of the municipality, and also that democratic arrangements are forged to make society's role in defending ecosystems unfeasible.

Urban Regeneration in the Brazilian urban policy agenda

ABSTRACTThis article aims to highlight the main arguments that sought to justify the incorporation and legitimization of Urban Regeneration in the urban policy agenda in Brazil. It shows how the convergence between different and even conflicting propositions related to urban development provided ideological support to the construction of discourses in which urban regeneration is portrayed as beneficial to society as a whole, and how recent international ideas on urban development were incorporated in urban policies of contemporary Brazil, considering our local socio-economic and political environment, planning tradition and regulatory frameworks. The focus will be on Rio de Janeiro and particularly São Paulo given the key role these two cities play in defining urban policy paradigms, guiding government agendas and exporting regulatory models to other parts of Brazil.

Post-Constitutional Urban Policy: the experience of the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro

The aim of this article is to reflect on the ill-fated expectations of Brazilian urban policy, much identified with the regulation of urban land use. The present work is based on the premise that urban policy is the dimension of social policy that provides effectiveness to urban planning. Thus, it is fitting that it should be evaluated within a context in which it began to interact with a set of social rights included in the 1988 Constitution. These were the underlying reflections resulting from research, which was conducted through interviews with urban planners who had worked with urban policy in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro during the 1980s, 1990s and into the 2000s. The main transformations in urban policy and the challenges faced in managing this policy were used as a reference to reflect on the directions taken by Brazilian urban policy.

DEMOCRACIA, PARTICIPAÇÃO SOCIAL E POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS: OS IMPASSES NA CONSTRUÇÃO DA POLÍTICA URBANA BRASILEIRA

The aim of this work is to discuss the impasse in the consolidation of the Brazilian urban policy, despite the existence of vast participatory institutional framework. Tensing theoretical assumptions that consider the opening of democratic spaces of social participation as a key element for the realization of equitable and less exclusive public policies, the dilemmas of urban policy in Brazil in the light of the reality of Porto Alegre are presented. After classifying the situation of demands included in the Participatory Budgeting investment plans within 2002 and 2010 on the subject of housing, this work strives to draw the dynamics of public policies in contexts covered by consolidated participatory forums. Finally, it is argued the necessity of including other explicative variables that go beyond the existence of participatory institutions. In the case of urban policy, the analysis focused on the actors involved in implementation processes and management policy is essential. Social actors and state agents are located in different spaces of institutional engineering of public policy, and the lowest or highest degree of achievement of social demands will depend on strategic negotiation of these actors in that space.