2016 - 4th WPSC "Global crisis, planning & challenges to spatial justice in the North and in the South", Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Јuly 3-8th

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Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
(AESOP, 2016) Randolph, Rainer
We are publishing here the extended abstracts presented at the IV WPSC. Those which were discussed in the Track Sessions, as well as a considerable number of contributions in Plenary and Special Sessions and Roundtables. Farnak Miraftab´s Opening Keynote “Insurgency, planning and the prospect of a humane urbanism” was published (in portuguese) in ANPUR´s journal Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais (Brazilian Journal of Urban and Regional Studies), v.18, n. 3 (2016), p. 363-377 (http://rbeur.anpur.org.br/rbeur/article/view/5499). It is our conviction that these texts reflect an important panorama of ideas, thoughts, experiences and practices of the nearly 600 researchers, scientists, students and practioneers who attended the congress in Rio de Janeiro with the aim to have an unique opportunity to discuss the matter of planning with colleagues from all over the world. As it puts our colleague Carlos Balsas in the conclusions he wrote about his experiences by participating the discussions at the congress: “Attention was directed at the need to look forward to more planning not less, more planning research not less, and more educational opportunities to strengthen urban and regional planning. … Alternative paradigms based on the radical deconstruction of prevailing knowledge sets and philosophies by some of those living in southern and northern hemispheres are making positive strides and can be confidently further developed”
Open Access
The meaning and content of education in (urban) planning and planning practice in different social contexts
(AESOP, 2016) Magela Costa, Geraldo; de Melo Monte-Mór, Roberto Luís; Watson, Vanessa; Roy, Ananya
National Constitution produced the institutional support and legitimacy for propositions and actions that involve civil society in the process of planning. Metropolitan planning, experienced as a federal and state technocratic practice during the military governments, lost its momentum during the redemocratization process of the 1980s and only in this century was it restored. In Belo Horizonte, UFMG, the federal university, has played a central role in metropolitan planning since 2009, working with the State, municipalities and organized popular sectors and communities. A methodology based on participatory processes reoriented planning approaches to emphasize life space as opposed to abstract space, while focusing on metropolitan restructuring based on a blue-and-green-weft and on the construction of urbanity and metropolitan citizenship. These experiences have raised questions about planning practices and theories as they bring transdisciplinary approaches to academic teaching, researching and university practices and relations beyond its walls.
Open Access
Nature in the city: interactions and contradictions
(AESOP, 2016) de Moura Costa, Heloisa Soares; Nasr, Joe; Refinetti Martins, Maria Lúcia; Sharma, Utpal; Osório, Leticia
The session has as theoretical reference the field of Political ecology of urbanization, seeking to articulate some interactions and contradictions related to the multiple ways that nature reveals itself in the city. The session welcomes topics discussing disputes over natural assets such as land, water, air, and biodiversity, resulting in social and environmental conflicts leading to different notions of justice, vulnerability and risk. Discussing nature in the city may help the understanding of the emerging concept of the urban commons; their forms of appropriation and reproduction as in water fronts, urban agriculture, protection areas among other contentious uses. The session aims to explore the role and agency of social agents involved, their forms of representation, appropriation or knowledge relates do nature.
Open Access
Small and medium-sized towns: role and policy challenges in a globalized world
(AESOP, 2016) Demaziere, Christophe; Beltrão Sposito, Maria Encarnação; İnce, İrem; Inkoom, Daniel; Mitrea, Andrei; Todes, Alison
During the last decades, metropolises and large city-regions around the world have been considered by many scholars and policymakers as the main drivers of development (Friedmann, 1986; World Bank, 2009). Within the context of the current economic slowdown in many countries, large cities are seen again as catalysts. Economists claim that urban location advantages augment when the city size increases due to externalities that stem from investments in public services, large markets of outputs, and large and diversified markets of inputs. In contrast, small and medium-sized towns have been left aside and far less a subject of a scientific discussion (Bell and Jayne, 2009). But critical views have emerged. For instance, J. Robinson (2002) argues that urban research has been dominated by studies on large cities in developed countries. Through the concept of “ordinary cities”, she claims that all cities, regardless of their size or location, show dynamic and innovative aspects; and at the same time they face constraints and challenges. In the global South, it seems important to explore the role of small towns within rapid urbanization. On other continents, and especially in Europe, how can secondary towns contribute to territorial cohesion, for instance in rural and peripheral regions undergoing ageing and depopulation?
Open Access
Sport Mega-events, ambitions and disappointments: a never-ending history of conflicts and struggles?
(AESOP, 2016) dos Santos Junior, Orlando Alves; Boykoff, Jules; Gaffney, Christopher; Mascarenhas de Jesus, Gilmar; Osório, Leticia
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were the first full-fledge corporate capitalist Games. By 1984, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had, under the guidance of President Juan Antonio Samaranch, started to become the business behemoth we know today. The Los Angeles Games were the first Olympics to be fulsomely sponsored by the private sector. Yet, I argue the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics should be viewed as a neoliberal blip on the wider terrain of celebration capitalism’s development. The LA Games famously generated a profit of $222 million, but that doesn’t take into account the hidden public surpluses like transportation infrastructure, policing, and security. In the early 1980s the IOC felt it needed to diversify its revenue streams so it wasn’t so reliant on television-rights money. There was also the desire to control the marketing of the Games and to squelch renegade firms’ ambush marketing efforts. With this in mind, in 1983 the IOC established The Commission for New Sources of Financing. Two years later, and in the wake of the markedly commercial LA ‘84 Games, the IOC founded “The Olympic Programme” (TOP), which later became the “Worldwide Partner Program.” Today, corporate sponsors have become ubiquitous at the Olympics. The 1984 Olympics and the corporate sponsorship program have led many to argue that the Olympic Games are a picture-perfect example of neoliberal capitalism—or neoliberalism. Neoliberal capitalism is marked by privatization, deregulation, and the financialization of the economy. The idea is to deliberately dismantle the social welfare state while snuffing out Keynesian principles and programs. Neoliberal capitalism’s much-recited mantra is to let the market decide.
Open Access
Informality and planning education: opportunities for innovation?
(AESOP, 2016) Odendaal, Nancy; Siame, Gilbert; Hernandez-Garcia, Jaime; Klink, Jeroen; Tella, Guillermo; Bhan, Gautam
The global financial crisis and subsequent austerity measures in the North and South have brought into stark relief, the limitations of the formal economy in absorbing labour, and the diminishing role of the state in providing access to basic services and housing. Further, in many cities of the South, institutional and legal provisions remain detached from the everyday urban realities and are unable to create a platform for inclusive city planning and service provision. Informal urbanization has therefore continued to become a feature of cities in the global South, as evident in the proliferation of informal settlements on the fringes and on ‘leftover’ land in urban spaces and the increasing importance of the informal economy in providing livelihoods to many. The traditional approach to urban planning, one that emphasizes predictability and control, is ill equipped to deal with the scale at which informality manifests in cities of the global South. Informal settlements not only make up a large portion of the global South cities but are also a dynamic part of them in physical, social and cultural terms. Fiori and Brandao (2010: 188) argue that “Urban informality is inexorably interwoven with the city as a whole – at all scales and levels – and has to be seen as another way of being in the city and constructing it.”
Open Access
Educating planners for disaster risk reduction
(AESOP, 2016) Sliuzas, Richard; Velasquez, Jerry; Sliuzas, Richard; Muhammad Ludin, Ahmad Nazri; Frank, Andrea I.; Nedovic-Budic, Zorica
UNISDR’s Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 is a companion to the Sustainable Development Goals, that seeks to enable governments and civil society to take action to prepare their countries and cities for risks of disasters and climate change now and into the future. This roundtable intends to establish the state of the art from the regional planning networks in how disaster risk reduction (DRR) is addressed in planning education. In a roundtable at AESOP’s 2015 conference UNISDR’s Jerry Velasquez recently pointed clearly to the potential of spatial planning in increasing the impact of global DRR efforts. Realizing this potential can be achieved if DRR is firmly established as a key focus of planning education in planning schools globally. The DRR curricula should be focused on societal demand but also based upon sound scientific knowledge and understanding of how DRR methods, legislation and programmes can be effectively introduced into a specific local context. The roundtable will examine to what extent DRR is recognized as a key aspect in contemporary planning curricula. Short reviews will be provided on the state of DRR education in the different world regions to provide insight into the level of attention for DRR issues in undergraduate, graduate and professional planning education. Examples will be provided of how planning for DRR can be introduced and integrated into existing planning programmes and the bilateral connections between research and teaching.
Open Access
Insurgences, Conflicts and Planning
(AESOP, 2016) Vainer, Carlos Bernardo; Miraftab, Faranak; Yiftachel, Oren; Stavrides, Stavros; de Oliveira, Fabricio Leal; Maricato, Erminia; Fernandes, Ana Maria
This proposal is based on the understanding that it is in everyday urban conflicts and not only in disturbances and crises, that can be found and seen the social dynamics through which our cities speak. The study of urban conflict, therefore, offers a rich key to reality and urban dynamics readings. And more than that, they can inspire new ways of conceiving and implementing policies and plans. In the face of conflict, main stream points to participatory and businesslike processes, whose core and primary purpose is to avoid, bypass, mediate or resolve conflicts that are seen as dysfunctional, costly, threatening. Civic peace and harmony would constitute, in this perspective, the condition through which the city-enterprise realizes its competitive potential: the polis submits itself to the city, politics gives way to business. Contested Planning, on the contrary, points to and bets on the creative potential of conflict, from which emerge collective subjects that rescue the city as political arena, as a place in which citizens face and confront each other to discuss and arbitrate the urbe’s fates. Now it is the polis that imposes itself to the city. In Brazil and throughout the World, experiences of social resistance and struggles for territory, has favored new planning practices based on conflict. The meeting will bring together researchers and experiences that have been addressing them.
Open Access
Rethinking the fight for urban reform in Brazil (and Latin America)
(AESOP, 2016) Maricato, Erminia; Angotti, Tom; Teixeira, Paulo; Boulos, Guilherme; Senra, Kelson; Maricato, Ermínia
At the time the new Brazilian constitution was being enacted (1987), after the end of the military dictatorship, social movements came together to form the National Forum for Urban Reform (FNRU), with the purpose of providing a common platform for their fragmentary claims, including public participation in land use decisions and planning policies as well as a newly defined right to the city. This Constitution was vague when addressing the enforcement of the social function of property, and enforcement was postponed until a specific law was passed to regulate it: the City Statute (Federal Law n.10.257/2002), which was enacted 13 years after the 1988 Constitution. In turn, the City Statute displaced the enforcement of its mechanisms onto master plans, in compliance with the Constitution. Most of the master plans drafted after 2001 resulted in vague and general texts that deferred the enforcement of the City Statute’s mechanisms to municipal laws.
Open Access
Urban land question. Planning, property and (In) security of tenure under the empire of finance
(AESOP, 2016) Rolnik, Raquel
The practice - which includes urban codes and regulations associated with investments on urban expansion or renewal - is strongly embedded in the liberal thinking prevalent at its birth, a model of socio-political organization where property, rights and citizenship are interweaved . Private property of land, connected with land appropriation and allocation only through market transactions inscribed within certain contractual rules, which are the forms through which land rent can be extracted and a fundamental element of the capitalist accumulation regime – also have an essential political dimension. According to Polanyi, the freedom of commercializing properties, especially land properties, constitutes an essential part of individual freedom, which is the basis for individual citizenship rights. However, since than, and still now, land and tenure regimes and modes of creating cities and territories are rather multiple, generating not just one, but several forms of production, appropriation and allocation of space. Planning has never fulfilled its utopia of total order and control of cities, neither the total transformation and submission of tenure regimes to one and only mode of allocating and transforming space.
Open Access
Formal and informal land and settlement development in African cities: connections and conflicts. The cases of Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Botswana (sponsored by the Lincoln Centre)
(AESOP, 2016) Watson, Vanessa; Ngau, Peter; Agunbiade, Muyiwa; Kombe, Wilbard; Kalabamu, Faustin
Sub-Saharan Africa is urbanising rapidly with suggestions that many cities will double in size over the next twenty years. This growth is taking place in a context of limited state resources to spend on urban infrastructure, limited urban tax revenue to contribute to the infrastructure demand, high levels of poverty and inequality, low formal job creation and under-capacitated local and national governments. Informal settlements as a form of shelter are the norm rather than the exception in many parts of the continent. A particularly serious concern is that planning and land management frameworks are inappropriate as tools to manage this rapid growth, leaving many African cities with severe urban land use institutional deficits including inappropriate concepts, legislation, norms and standards. Many African cities have a combination of ‘modern’ and traditional land tenure systems with these processes often working in parallel with each other. And in addition the intensification of informal and unregulated property markets results in a widening gap between formal and informal sectors as well as growing conflicts between state and non-state actors. This round table will focus on the issue of land and planning conflicts in four major African cities. While the cities themselves (Lagos, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Gaborone), and these countries, are very different in many ways, there are significant commonalities in terms of relationships between formal and informal land processes, how the poor attempt to secure land, and how both the state and ‘formal’ private sector respond to this. At the same time there are new coping strategies, new collaborations and new ‘ways of doing’ in African cities that could suggest innovative ways forward in the future.
Open Access
Global young academics & practitioners assembly
(AESOP, 2016) Van den Berghe, Karel
The AESOP Young Academics Network (http://www.aesop-youngacademics.net/) is a loosely structured branch of AESOP, which encourages the active participation and exchange of academic work. From PhD students to Post-docs and those starting out in academic positions, the YA Network provides a platform through which the academic leaders of tomorrow can share ideas in an open and inclusive environment, challenging and supporting one another in the attainment of superior academic output. The young academics network has two core aims: - make AESOP a challenging environment for young academics; - open up the structure of AESOP to better encourage young academic involvement. Creating a challenging environment: - form a network of young academics within AESOP; - initiate activities for young academics; - make the AESOP congress more attractive for young academics. Opening up the structure: - ensure that attention is paid to the particular wishes and needs of young academics in the activities of AESOP; - use the opportunities offered by internet to make the organization more accessible and interactive, and to disseminate useful information. Participants and discussants: • Coordination Team of AESOP Young Academics • Other academic association (like young members of ACSP, AECURN, etc.)
Open Access
Porto Maravilha: Rio de Janeiro’s port revitalization project in critical perspective
(AESOP, 2016) Broudehoux, Anne-Marie
This panel takes a critical look at Porto Maravilha, an emblematic yet highly controversial urban mega-project that seeks to revitalize Rio de Janeiro’s old port district. Launched in 2009 as part of Olympic-related urban transformations, this project represents the largest public-private-partnership in Brazilian history. It aims to turn five square kilometers of devalued housing and industrial buildings into a world-class, upscale mixed-use entertainment district, through the stimulation of real estate activity, the construction of cultural facilities and the development of tourist attractions. Meant to be the city’s new world class showcase, it wishes to attract upmarket businesses and residents, going as far as tripling its current population. Porto Maravilha encompasses five urban neighborhoods that have a rich yet fragile social, cultural and ethnic history. The area was long known as “Little Africa”, home of the world’s most important slave market, and birthplace of many Afro-Brazilian cultural traditions such as samba and capoeira, which are both recognized by UNESCO as part of Brazil’s immaterial heritage. Once a dynamic commercial and industrial neighborhood, the area experienced a decline in its traditional activities during the second half of 20th century.
Open Access
Emergent urban spaces: a planetary perspective
(AESOP, 2016) Duarte Cardoso, Ana Claudia
The session explores some of the conceptual, methodological and practical strengths and limitations of one dominant approach in contemporary urban theory – planetary urbanisation. With its main advocate being Brenner (2014), this is a neo-Lefebvrean approach, which intends to overcome dichotomies such as North and South, developed and developing, and city and countryside. It challenges bounded urbanisms and holds the key assumption that in our contemporary world everything is urban. According to Brenner (2014), the urban describes the concentration of infrastructure and populations in cities (implosions) but, simultaneously, it refers to urban features in non-urban settings (explosions). Hence, the urban represents a global condition characterised by a set of politico-economic relations associated with processes of extractivism, neoliberalism, capitalist land management, etc. Though an increasingly dominant approach in urban studies, planetary urbanisation perspectives also pose new challenges: Current research mainly set out a new research agenda but has not provided a sufficient theoretical and methodological ‘tool kit’ which allows for its application.
Open Access
Social conflicts, urban violence and planning strategies: issues and evidence from the North and the South
(AESOP, 2016) Coutinho Silva, Rachel
This roundtable investigates new forms of planning and governance in face of growing social inequalities, emerging conflicts and escalating violence in urban areas subjected to the externalities of a global economy and to the risks and vulnerabilities locally produced. In order to deal with social unrest, new public policies are being proposed to pacify or recuperate degraded and dangerous areas. This process is taking place in many cities, by means of different plans and programs. The papers will examine conflict in different urban settings and cultures, dealing with the question of tensions in informal and formal areas. We intend to explore social conflicts as they relate to urban violence and planning. All papers acknowledge that existing public policies are failing in promoting social inclusion, spatial integration and basic human rights. We hope to foster a critical analysis of current planning strategies for dealing with conflict and depressed areas and to contribute for the dialogue between planners from different parts of the world. The first paper by William Goldsmith (Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, CRP/Cornell U.) – “The Drug War and Inner City Neighborhoods” examines how violence evolving from drug trade in the United States depressed big-city neighborhoods is affecting local residents and the surrounding city and metropolitan area.
Open Access
Beyond the classroom: some experiences of brazilian universities
(AESOP, 2016) D'Ottaviano, Camila
This roundtable will discuss five community outreach experiences coordinated by architecture and urban planning professors from four different Brazilian universities from different regions of Brazil. The dissemination of theses experiences is significant in a way to show possible paths of how the urban planning under graduation courses can happen also beyond the classroom, with community outreach and social engagement from our professors and students. 1 - Lapenna Neighbourhood: Housing Upgrading and Mapografia Project – Profs. Camila D’Ottaviano and Jorge Bassani. Since the partnership with Tide Setubal Foundation, the USP team is working in Jardim Lapenna in two different projects: the Housing Upgrading Project and the Mapografia. The first project aims to provide technical knowledge for the improvement of housing conditions. The second emphasis on high school students understanding and appropriation of the urban environment and public space where they study and live.
Open Access
Look, act, activate: creative tactics in public space
(AESOP, 2016) Sansão Fontes, Adriana
In urban space always something is happening. (...) Here or there a crowd can gather, objects can be piled up, a party can take place, an event, terrifying or pleasant, can occur. Hence the fascinating character of urban space: the centrality always possible. (Lefebvre, 1999:121) The aim of this panel is to present different perspectives on some of the creative contemporary tactics of intervention and activation of public space in contemporary cities, focusing on Brazil. Contemporary society is experiencing a very dynamic time, with characteristic of ephemerality in various spheres of social and economic relations. This prints some characteristic features in the spaces of collective life, such as feelings of hostility, individualism and superficial relations between individuals. This state of urban anesthesia – or even “exception” – tends to reflect itself on physical spaces, building ultra-protective situations and privatization, whose side effects of social exclusion and abandonment of places call for creative and forceful responses by professionals and citizens in general. Faced with these issues, we will present actions and reactions (temporaries or permanents) to this state of passivity, which can leverage existing situations, intensify the everyday urban experience, regain places and give identity to degraded areas, contributing to permanent changes in the medium and long term.
Open Access
In search of institutional mechanisms and policy frameworks for inclusive and effective planning. Reflections from Bogotá and Santiago de Chile
(AESOP, 2016) Sanchez Guzman, Santiago
The Latin America urbanization process has steadily risen during the last decade following demographic transformation trends seen during the last half of the 20th century, shifting from rural and regionally distributed communities to a more spatially centralized organization with vast attracting urban poles. Today, 80% of the continent’s population is concentrated in cities, placing the region as the most “urbanized” continent of the world with nearly 470 million urban inhabitants in 2010 (U.N. Habitat 2012). However, and despite this urban growth has triggered positive and negative economic, social and environmental impacts in all of the continent’s countries, socio-spatial and economic disparity indicators still place the continent as one of the most unequal regions in the world (Kingstone 2011; De Ferranti et al. 2003). Characterized by highly fragmented built environments, Latin American urban agglomerations still struggle with high poverty and criminality rates where spatial segregation based on socio-economic stratification have generated ghettos and gated communities. In these urban agglomerations, access to technical, financial, human and social resources, knowledge, justice, education and health have been accessible mainly to higher-income classes as “services”, whereas poorer communities are burdened with environmental risks and vulnerabilities. Faced with the complexity and multiple dimensions of these challenges, many Latin American cities (including those here analyzed) have become during the last 15 years important “laboratories” for innovative urban planning and policy making strategies, contributing new responses to questions of democratic management, socio-spatial inclusion and environmental challenges.
Open Access
The impacts of sports mega-events on the cities: FIFA World Cup urban legacy in Brazil
(AESOP, 2016) Nobre, Eduardo A. C.
The idea of promoting sports mega-events has been defended by strategic planning consultants as a way for cities to compete for “scarce international investments” and reach economic development in the “extremely competitive environment” of Contemporary Capitalism. They say that hosting such events will bring together an amount of public and private investments in infrastructure, services and job generating activities that would take a longer time to happen without them: the so called “legacy”. However, many authors have criticized this strategy as it generally represents a great diversion of capital to business accumulation whereas public spending has little social return and most of times the initial objectives are not accomplished. In spite of all the critics, the Brazilian Government presented a bid in 2006 to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup, with a rationale aiming at: “…coordinating a program of investments that will transform some of the most important capitals of the country from North to South and from all regions: Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo. For all Brazilian, whatever the outcome of the World Cup will be, an important legacy in infrastructure, job and income creation will remain, promoting the country\'s image globally.” (Federal Republic of Brazil, 2006). The aim of this round table is to analyse the 2014 FIFA World Cup legacy in Brazil, taking into account five host-cities (Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo).
Open Access
The urban transport crisis in emerging economies
(AESOP, 2016) Pojan, Dorina
The prosed round table will discuss urban transport issues, policies, and initiatives in some of the world’s major emerging economies: Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam. The round table will aim to include one presentation on each country, focusing on the capital and/or selected major cities. The round table will also serve as a venue to launch a new volume, entitled “The Urban Transport Crisis in Emerging Economies” which has been co-edited by the round table organizers (Dorina Pojani and Dominic Stead) and will be published by Springer in 2016 (before IV WPSC). The volume contributors will be invited to participate in the round table. Among the many “emerging economies,” as defined by think tanks, investment firms, and international organizations, the countries listed above share a range of similar characteristics. They all have: (a) high urbanization rates (including megacities) relative to “developed” countries due to mass rural-urban migration and/or high birth rates; (b) dynamic urban development processes, led mostly by the private sector, with high construction levels; (c) extensive urban sprawl (including decaying large housing estates) and middle and upper class suburbanization; (d) segregated communities (e.g. gated communities for the rich and the middle classes); (e) chaotic traffic patterns, with high car and motorcycle use, and high environmental pollution; (f) rapidly growing motorization; and (g) informality and/or corruption in the formal planning system. In the past decade, studies have analyzed transport issues in individual cities in these countries.