Conflictual Planning and Resistance to Pseudo-Participation in Urban Planning Projects

Comparison between cases from Brazil and Portugal

Abstract

In so-called democratic societies, the level of democracy can be defined by how much decision-making is shared with its population through popular participation.

Although most participatory democracies do not present great openness to participation in urban management and planning, citizens wishing to have more autonomy organize themselves with supporters in counter-hegemonic movements of insurgent planning that challenge the structures of power and inequality and injustice to give voice to dominated or subordinate populations. This article analyzes these concepts, deepened in the theoretical foundation, through two cases of urban interventions without initial openness to participation, in distinct geographical and temporal contexts. Despite almost a decade of distance between them and being in different countries (Brazil and Portugal), the similarities are greater than the differences that could exist between the contexts, which demonstrates a recurring problem in current neoliberal capitalist societies.