De Souza 2006 Together With the State, Despite the State, Against the State

8/8/2019 De Souza 2006 Together With the State, Despite the State, Against the State

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CITY,VOL.10, No. 3, DECEMBER006 Routledgeg,*&ncTogether #h the state,despite the state, againstthe stateSocial movements as 'criBical urbanplanningf agentsMarceIo Lopes de Souza

Curiously, eve n progressive planners usually share wi th their conservative coun terparts theassumption t ha t the state is the sole urb an planning agent. This paper outlines th at eve n ifthe state is sometimes controlled b y more or less progressive forces an d eve n infl%enced b yso&l movements, civil society shozlld be seen as a powerfiel actor in the conception andimplem entat ion of zlrban planntng and m anag ement . Llrawing on examples fro m zlrbansocial move men ts in Latin Americn, in partintlar five ln activism, the sern-teto m ov em en tand participatory budgeting, it explores h o w civil society can conceive, an d e ven i mpl eme nt,complex, radically alternat ive so n'o-spatial strategies. Th is can be seen as part of a g a u neatt emp t at 'grassroots urban planning:

E en progressive professional plan-ners and planning theoreticiansusually share with their conserva-tive counterparts the (tacit) assumptionthat the state apparatus is the sole urbanplanning agent-for better or for worse.'However, even if we accept that the(local) state apparatus not always plans forresidential segregation, for the interests ofenterprises and against those of working-class residents (although the state does itvery often, and although it is par t of itsstrz~tbtral ssence to assure tlie reproduc-tion of capitalist and heteronomous statusquo as a whole), we must tr y to overcomethe intellectual (possibly also ideological)prejudice which prevents ns from seeingthat civil society does not only criticize(as a 'victirn' of) state-led planning, butalso can directly and (pro)activel y

conceive and, to some extent, impleinentsolutions independently of the stateapparatus. These solutions often deserveto be understood as '(grassroots) urbanplanning'.

Progressive urban planning led by thelocal state but consistently open towardspopular participation and committed tothe reduction of ineq~lalities n the frame-work of a favourable political conjuncturecorresponds to a very uncommon situa-tion, but i t is far from being impossible.'However, it is by no means the only possibil-ity in terms of 'critical &an planning'.Since the state is a heteronomous structurein itself, even so-called left-wing, progres-sive political parties have to find a compro-mise and adjust themselves in order togovern in the general framework of acapitalist society-especially at the local

ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/06/030327-1 O 2006 Taylor &L FrancisDOT: 10.1 080/13604810600982347


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328 CIN VOL.10, No. 3ievel. Seduction by power is considerable,pressures froin powerful lobbies aretremendous, some compromises andconcessions seem to be unavoidable, so thatcornlnitltnen to social change frequentlybegins to diminish over time. If civil societycannot organize itself autonomously, therisk of co-optdt-ion by the state is big(ger)and the political-pedagogical wor th of'participation' small(er). Moreover, the besthelp which social movements can offer tosocial change does not consist in turninginto mere 'assistants' to the state appara-tus, but in constructively criticizing thestate and putting it permanently underpressure-which is always necessary, evenin the case of progressive governments. Indoing so, social movements can Inore effec-tively act as 'counterpressuring forces' inrelation to conservative lobbies.

Civil society a U C ~ especially socialmove.ments) should be seen as a(potentially or de facto) relevant agent inrelation to the conception and implemen-tation of urban planning and managementstrategies. This interpretation probablysounds strange, for even left-wing plannersare almost always quite 'state-centred'('estadocZntricosY:Souza, 2002). The mainpurpose of the following account liesprecisely in discussing and exemplifyingthis second, theoretically neglected variantof 'critical planning'--a radically bot tom -up, genuine 'grassroots urban planning'.What is 'urban planning' ultimately?Planning means that a collectivity (or a singleperson) prepare then~selves o avoid prob-lems and to take advantage of developmentswhich can be lnore or less foreseen as 1ikel.yor very 1.i.kely scenarios'. Urban plan.ning is,as an attempt to than-ge spatial organizationand social relations in the city, the same thingat another level of complexity. Differentsocial. groups (classes etc.) 11.ave different,sometimes antagon.istic interests, so that the'best case scenario' for a group can be the'worst case scen.arioY or an.oth.er. The stateapparatus trj.es (by llleans of persuasi.on, co-optation and if necessary repression) to

'coordi.nate' these various interests-in fact,state interventi.on is the 'result' of thesedjfferen.t vectors' of pressure, some of thembeing of course normally much stronger andeffective than. the others, even if th.ose can bernore or less 'neutrali.zed' under specialcIrcumstan.ces.Why do people give so much importance tothe state apparatus i.n regard to planni~lg?There are both 'good' (importance andcentrality of the state apparatus as a regulatoryinstitution, access to public resources) and bad(ideology, 'state-centrism', the myth. of thestate as a guarantor of 'common good' and'public i-nterest') reasons for that. It sounds'natural' to most people to think of the stateapparatus as th.e sole planning agent, since itpossesses some privileges de facto and someprerogatives de jure, such as the power toregulate land use in the whole city throughurban law (zoning ordinances), as well as theform.al power to enforce its determinations('legal rnon.opoly of v:iolence', police).H:owever, one can see that under the influen.ceof 'urban n eo-li.beral.i.sm' (to employ Harvey'sexpression [19w: 'entrepreneurialism'), thelocal state often.abdicates or has to abdicate (asan imposition of the central state) part of itspower to regulate the producti-on of space infavour of private companies, developers, andso on (land use deregulation, someti~nesalledeuphemistically 'planning flexibilization').I3. e old mask of the state as a 'neutral and justjudge' has fallen in connection.with the 'entre-preneurialistic turn' in urban planning (in the1980s particularly in Britain and th.e USA,sin.ce the 1990s in other cou.n.tries as well).Conservative planning is often even. moreconservative today than it was at the timewllen classical regulatory planning was ideo-logically hegemonic and the 'Keynesian state'was at its zenith. Not only in the face of this,but especially under these circu.m.stances, itseems to be quite obvious that social move-ments must try to propose and implementth.eir o m l.ternativesolutions.Social movements have to plan alternatives,they cannot be restricted to criticism anddemands towards the state. They must be able


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to offer proposals an d conceive concrete alter-nntives-and, to s0m.e extent, to realize th.emdespite the state apparatus and (at the end ofthe day , ai1d no t only w hen the y face a pardc-ularly conservati.ve government) against th estate. In fact, they often do it sometimes in aspatially complex and comprehensive way,not only demo nstrating knowledge and inter-est in relation to plans and rep orts prepared bythe (local) state, but also developing actionswhich can be interpreted as an alternativeapproach to land use, housing, traffic, envi-ronmental protection, and so on (see examplesin the following section). It goes withoutsaying that social mov ements are n ot free ofcontradictions; they o perate inside heteron o-mou s societies, that is, in the nliddle of a mo reor less hostile environn~ent, nd in terms ofpolitical cultu re and political practices on e canfind quite often prob lems such as imitation ofstatecraft and state-like structures at themicrolevel (or to remember Foucault 119841,at the level of th e 'mic rop hys i cs of powel-') onthe part of personalized and authoritarianleaders, ambiguities, an d so on . How ever , civilsociety and even the poor are not only orentirely 'powerless' people wh o need to be'empowered'; 'empowerment' can of coursemean revolutiollary changes sometimes, bu t itis also a process. A process of conqueringautonomy and overcoming heteronomy.Radical social criticism under globalizationis better known in the form of transnationalnetwo rks of civil society as a response to neo-liberal economic policies and institutionssuch as the International M onetary Fu nd an dthe Wo rld Bank. T his kind of anti-globaliza-tion. rn-ovement and its orga nization s are'urban' only in a very bro ader sense, becausethey are mostly (but not always) concen-trated i n cities, whicli are privileged stages forprotest and many kinds of popular mobiliza-tion. However, they are not organizedaccording to 'territori.al identities'. Neverthe-less, there are also several social activi.sm.swhich are urban in a strict sense and whichcan be seen as movements i n a p r o pe r s e i ~ s e . ~Th ey oppo se 'urban. neo-liberalism' and thepressures from big business over weak and

conservative local governments, th ey react toune rny loy ~n ent, victions, lack of appro priatehousing and land speculation in cities. 1111Brazilian metropolises such as SZo Paulo andt o a 1.esser exte nt in :Ria de Janeiro, as well. asin some cities .in. oth er countries, th e squat-ters' rnovemel1.t is playin g a n interestin g role.111 several cities in A.rgentina, the piqueteromovement, wh ich com prises a lot of specificorganizations, can also be seen as a type ofstricto sensu urban n~o vem ent; i .ts basiscom.prises unemployed people, w ho interrupttraffic on streets and railroads as a form ofprotest (so-called piquetes), but also organizesquatting and a whole alternative life at theneighbourhood level, from alternativeeconomic circuits (incl.uding taking posses-sion of mism anaged factori-es which. we ntbankrupt ) to forms of a lt erna tive c~ l t u r e . ~othis kin d of m ovem ent, territorializati.011 (atthe level of the settlement or of the barrio[~neigl~buurhood])s no t a matter of 'territo-rial corporati.s.m.' (Souz a, 2000a, p . 160) o r of'politics of turf' (Cox and McCarthy, 1982),but the concrete expression of a 11on-paro-chial, genuine 'militant particularism': thedissident territories whi.ch are created bv th.einsurgent spatial practices of tllose move-ments are bastions of an econom.ic, politicaland cultural resistance in the framework ofwhich local and regional particularities arehighly valued and at the same time a universalmessage (freedom and solidarity) is sent.

I . Urban activists as 'grassroots planners'1.1. 'Autonomy': a n ew 'para digm 'for socidlmov eme nts theory and praxis?E t i m ~ l o g i c a l l ~ ,utonomy (Greek aut6s: self,ndmos: law) means 'living according to one'sown laws', while h etero no my n1ean.s theopposite: exterllal law, a law imposed fromoutside or above. The concept of autonomyhas been discussed by ph,il.osopherssince the18th century, from Kant to coiltenlporaryliberals, wh.0 typically overemphasize itsindividual dim.ension.


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330 CITYVal. 10, No. 3Graeco-French philosopher Cornelius

Castori adis (1922-1 997) understood muchbetter than tlie liberals the interdependence ofthe two aspects which autonomy embraces:individual autonomy, that is the capacity of aparticular individual to make choices in free-dom (which clearly depends both on strictlyindividual and psycho1 ogical circumstancesand on material and political factors) andcollective autonomy, that is conscious andexplicitly free self-rule of a particular society,as based on concrete institutional and rnate-rial guarantees of equal chances of participa-tion in socially relevant decision-makingprocesses. An autoiiomous society 'institutes'itself on tlie basis of freedoni both from meta-physical constraints (e.g. religious or mythi-cal foundations of laws and norms) and frompolitical oppression (Castoriadis, 1975, 1983,1785,1990b, 1996,1999).

Especially in the philosophical work ofCastoriadis and in a way closely related to(but at the same time different from) classicalanarchism and 'council communism', auton-omy was understood as an alternative both torepresentative democracies (which are,according to Castoriadis, in reality 'liberaloligarchies') and Marxist 'socialism' (byvirtue of its authoritarian dimension).

While adopting Castoriadis' interpretationof the 'autonomy project' as a major sourceof politico-philosophical and ethical i nspira-tion, I have also argued in several works thatit is necessary to make this politico-socialproject more 'operational' for purposes ofaction fjic et nunc-for instance, by means offinding a comproniise between, on the onehand, a .very ambitious level of tholrght an daction ('utopian' din~ension, 'radicalhorizon'), an d more or less modest tacticalvictories here and now (tactical, local gains interms of reduction of lieteronomy which canhave important poli ti co-pedagogical cumula-tive effects in the long run) on the other hand(Souza, 2OOOb, 2002). In this light we canevaluate the performance of both institution-alized participatory chani~els and socialmovements, and it is interesting to see thatazitonomt'd (Port.: autonomid) is a word

which is often used by several socialmove.m.ents n :Latin America, particular1y bythe Piqueteros iii Argentina and theZapatzstds in Mexico (see Barrio, 2005;Chatterton, 2005; Zi.bechi, 2005). I:t is surelynot acciden.ta1 that some intellect~~alsinkedto the zapatistas and piqlreteros have culti-vated a dialogue with C:ornelius Castoriadis'work (see, for instance, Zibech.i, 1999).

Since 'knowledge is power', even.oppressed groups can exert some kind ofpower on the basis of their knowledge, asalready stressed by Foucault (see, forinstance, Foucault, 2005, p. 239). :For socialmovements it means that the more they usetheir 'local. knowledge' (knowledge of thespace, of people's needs and 'language') inte rn ~s f planning by means of combining itwith the technical kn.odedge produced bythe state apparatus and universities (in orderboth to criticize some aspects of this knowl-edge and to 'recycle' and use some otherones), the more strategic can be the way theyth-ink and act. This kind of knowledge (andof power) should not be underestimated,even if social lnnovements obvi.ously do not(and caniiot) 'plan' the city as the stateapparatus does it.

Beyond both 'state-centrism' (a usual 'sin'amongst progressive planners who wereinfluenced by Marxism) and 'we-don't-want-to-have-anything-to-do-with-the-state' (thetraditional anarchist position), it seems to benecessary to search a mix of autonomy ofcivil society ('ld mirada horizontal': 'thehorizontal look' [Zibechi, 29991) and verycautious cooperation with genuinely non-conservative parties which eventually cometo state power (even if this cooperation is a'risky business' for social movements. I willturn to this point in Section 2). The interna-tional literature furi~ishes examples of asuccessful combinatioll of 'non-institutional'('direct action', often even illegal actionsalbeit comrnonl y accepted as legi timate bythe population such as squatting) and institu-tional tactics (for instance, by means oftaking part in official participative sche~iiesor negotiating with the state) by some social


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movements, such as squatters in Amsterdam(Pruijt, 2003). As far as urban planning-inthe present broader sense-is concerned,some Brazilian experiences are very interest-ing. I will explore these examples in thefollowing section.

1.2. Brazilian examples: favela activism andthe sem.-teto rnovementBrazil provides many interesting examples ofsocial moveme~~ts'ttempts to change thesocio-spatial status quo.

Favela activism demoi~stratedalready in.the 1960s that eve12 the poor segment of civilsoci-ety can sometimes be (pro)active (andcreative) in terms of (alternative) urbanplanning. The roots of shanty-town upgrad-ing lie in the mid-1960s, when favela resi-den.ts in :Ria de J'anei.ro (parti.cularly in afdvela called Bris de Pina, in th.e North Zoneof the city) opposed evictioil and demandedto stay at the same place, while developing theapproach which is nowadays knownthroughout Brazil as urbanizagZo de favelas(literally 'urbanization of favelas', in factfivela upgrading). The slogan created then bythe favela residents became famous: 'urban-izagZo sim, rernogzo nZo' ('upgrading yes,eviction no') (see Santos, 1981). That isprecisely the reason why the crisis of tradi-tional urban social activisms (neighbourhoodactivism, favela activism) which can beobserved in most IBrazilian cities since thesecond half of the 1980s is surely a problem.In Brazil, both neighbourhood and favelaactivism played an important role in the 1970sand 1980s (as I said, as far as favela activism isspecifically concerned, already in the 1960s)in putting the local state under pressure-improvements such as basic infrastructure forpoor nei.gh.bourhoods have occurred in thecourse of generations not only by virtue ofpopulism, but also as a result of protests,m.obil.i.zation nd riots. But they are no longervery rel-evantactors in most cities: neighbour-hood associations are usually nothi.ng elsethan clientelistic, seiving as bastions of 'terri-

torial corporatism' for middle-class residentsor as structures for political bargaining(exchange of votes for petty favours) on thepart of the poor-or even (and increasingly)as instruments in the hands of favela-baseddrug traffi-ckers,especially in the case of Kiode Ja~leiro ut also in Siio Paulo and wi.th lessintensity in other Brazilian metropolises andbig cities as well (see about this latter problemSouza, 2000a, 2001,2005).

Nevertheless, if one considers th.e globalcon.text, it is easv to see that Brazil. has beenstrongly present in the contemporary worldin terms of civil society's proactive resistanceagainst oppression and injustice, from anti-(capitalist) globalization protests in SgoPaulo to the A4ovimento dos TrabalhadoresRurais Sem TerraiM ST (Kural LandlessWorkers Movement) to the World SocialPo ru ~n n Porto Alegre. Surely the generalcontext in the present-day world is verymudl that of an 'ipoqw du confirmismegineralisk', as Cornelius Castoriadis stressed(Castoriadis, 1990a), and Brazil is not anexception. Furthermore, many of theseprotests and activisms are not 'urban' strict0sensu, since they are not organized accordingto 'urban territorial identities' and space assuc11 does not play a strong role (as it plays,say, in conventional neigllhourhood activ-ism), even if most of them are coixentratedfor many reasons in (big) cities. However,one can also experience the rise (or anincreasing importance) of new urban move-ments in a strict sense since the 1 9 9 0 ~ ~uch asthe sem-teto (literally 'roofless') movement?GE'nemlirC s far from meaning absolute .

There is still not the kind of highlycomplex, 'multidimensional' urban move-ment like Argentina's piqueteros in Braziliancities, but sem-teto organizations such as theMovimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto(Homeless Workers Movement), MTST forshort, are growing and trying to widen thescope of their action in a more or less similarway." For MTST in particular (which is thebiggest organization of Brazil's sem-tetomovements, mainly active in the metropoli-tan area of Siio I'aulo), the il~ ai n ource of


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332 CIWVOL.10, No. 3inspiradoil has been the Rural LandlessWorkers Movement, which was ill factrespoilsible for s tructuriilg MTST in order tobuild a bridge to facilitate dialogue withurban populations and gain more popularsupport in the cities (a strategic goal, sincethe majority of the country's ii~h abita ntsivein cides-82 per cent in 2000 acco rding to th ePopu lation Census carried o ut b y t11iBraz.i.l-ian l~lst i tutef Geography and Statistics).MTST's 'rurban settlements' is a mo rerecent example of a socio-spatial strategftowards urban. development from below. Atthe beginning of the present decade, MTST,clearly under the influence of the MST'model', developed (along with another orga-nization., Mov imento dos T rabalh adore sDesempregadoslMTD [Unemployed Work-ers Movement]) a proposal called 'assentam-entos rururb anos ' ('rurban se ttlements'). Thecore of thj.s stra tegy l.j.es in an attem pt tobuild settlements for urban workers at theperiphery of cities, in which people couldcultivate vegetables and breed small animals,thus becoming less dependent of the m arketto satisfy their alimentary basic needs. Ther ewas even the expectation that this kind ofsettlement could be attractive not just forfuture migrants, b ut also to favela inhabit-ants who presently live in shanty townsdispersed throughout the space of metropo-l.ises such as SZo Paulo and :Ria de Janeiro.Even if th is strategy did n ot prove itself verypromising, since it would be unrealistic toexpect that thos e residents of favelas situatedclose to th e C;BD or sub-centres wh.ere theycan find mo st jobs w ould have mu ch interesti.11 changing their homes for locations faraway at the periphery (so that it was eventu-ally criticized and abandoned by MTSTitself-according to oral inform ation by aMTST leader; personal talk with the authorin September 2005) it is as a recent exaillpleof civil society's vitality and (pro)active rolein relation. to u rban planning related issues.'Kurban settlements' is to some extent aninteresting idea, with ancient roots (one canthink on Kropotkin's ideas about the over-coming of the opposition between city and

countryside [Kropotkin, 1904]), but poorlyarticul aced in MTST's discou rse, altho ugh itremains as a topic which could be i~nportantfor public debate. Anyway, it is by far notthe on ly co ntrib ution of th e sem- teto move-ment in general, and of MTST in particular,to a 'critical urba n planning'. T he strateg y of'rurbail settlements' ~nirror certain 'intel-lectual dependency' of MTST in the face ofMST, which has been an interesting butpartly problematic coimecti on. How ever,MTST has tried to become intellectuallymore independent since 2004, and it hasmade (along with other organizations of thesem-teto movement) several contributions toan alternative spatiality for the sake of socialjustice; newer proposals and strategies havebeen developed in the last years.MTST's ordinary praxis shows an increas-ing ability to combine different approachesand methods. O n the one hand, squatt ing assuch as a challeng e for the cap italist 'order' ofprivate owne rship of land, along with attem ptsto develop new social relations (more solidar-ity, alternative culture, etc.), which is aremarkable aspect of the sem-teto movementin othe r coun tries as well (from the Germ anAutonomen in the 1980s and 1990s to thefamous Dutch experience [see, for instance,Pruijt, 20031). O n the other hand, we can alsoobserve a sm art use of some possibilitiesoffered by the existing legal framework inorder to 'stabilize' the possession of vacantland and buildings by sem-teto and avoidshort-term evictions-although the formallegal framework (from the Con stitution to theFederal Law of Urban D evelopment, or 'CityStatute', passed by the Congress in 2001) obvi-ously does not challenge private property,except to punish explicit land spec ulation andto protect the rights of fav ela residents undersome special circumstances (regularization ofadverse possessioa).State-led 'participatory planning' is neces-sarily restricted by existing laws, and even therelative1y progressive 'City Statute' merelyrestricts so me privileges of private prope rshipowners (though i t means undoubtedly aconsiderable progress in terms of legal


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framework for a country such as Brazil). In.contrast to this,MTST along vith oth.er orga-nization.~of the sem-teto nlovem.ent h.asdeveloped a radical and ambitious approachto socio-spatial, change. Nevertheless, sew-teto organizations sometimes try to take partin broader discussion.forums (for instance, inthose related to h0usi.n.gor to urban refor111 ingeneral, mainly supported and influenced bymore or less established non-governmentalorganizatj.ons-NGOs), and they also takeinto consideration exi-sting plans and zoningordi.nances-not always to just criticize th.em,but sometimes in order to consi.der certainlimits to action (i..e. areas of environrnen.talprotection) or obtain different types of usefulinformation..'

Another interesting example of today'scomplexity of MTST's sodo-spatial strategyis furnished by its attempt (since 2005) to lookfor political support in favelas, by means oforganizing discussion groups ('politicalcapacity- building') and even stimulating cr it-ical fornls of popular cul.ture. However,MTST knows that the problems of a favelaare quite different from those of an ocupagio(sem-tetn sett1.emen.t).As a MTST leader toldme (in September 2005), they know very wellthat favelas are contested spaces: alreadyexisting (and often. clientelistic) residents'associations, Pel~tecostal ch.urches . anddrug traffickers, all of them at the same place,side by si.de. :Drug trafficking is an importantchallenge, not only for the state an.d for state-led urban planning (see Souza, 20051, but alsofor social movenlen.ts and social activis~n ngeneral (see Souza, 2000a, 2005). As far as theMTST is concerned, this challenge is not onlyrel-ated to its attempt to develop actions i.n.favelas, but also due to the fact, that drugdealers or drug trafficking organizations can.try to 'territorialize' ocupag6es: at the periph-ery of Guarulhos (metropolitan region of SZoPaulo) MTST militants were already threat-ened and expelled by drug traffickers in 2004from one of the biggest settlements groundedby MTST, Anita Gari baldi. MTST leaders saythey are trying to find a way to 'coexist' withdrug traffickers since they cannot fight them,

however, without risking demoralization as alikely consequence of any form. of 'coopera-tion' (as has been tb.e case of some guerrillanlovem.ents in Latin Am.erica).

Of course, the sem-teto m.ovement i.s notgoing to change things radically alone-andwe should not forget that it has its own prob-lems. One of these problems i.s precisely thechallenge represented by long-tern1 mobiliza-tion of people who often do not correspondto 'working class' in a strict Marxist sense, butrather to 'Lurnpenproktaridt': very poor,quite often unemployed or underemployedpeople. Another problem is the real extent towhich the sem-teto movement is and will beable to develop a new 'political culture' interms of 'horizontal', non-hierarchical, genu-ine self-management practices. Many present-day social movements worldwide have incomlnon a strong commitment to autonomy.'Horizontality' seems to be a very in~po rtantcharacteristic of a large part of the Argentin-ian piquetero movement, although this move-ment comprises many organizations withdifferent political and ideological profiles.There are some organizations and ocupag6esdearly inspired by a 'horizontal', non-hierar-chical approach in Brazil as well, sucl~asocxpagdes Chiquinha Gonzaga and Zumbidos Palmares in Kio de Janeiro, closely linkedto the organization Frente de Lata Popular/FLP (Front for Popular Fight). Precisely inthis regard MTST shows some ambiguities,largely due to its 'genetic' links to MST(wl~ichs to some extent a contradictory orga-nization, which cornbin es some clear hierar-chical elements with grassroots discourse andpraxis); however, these hierarchical elementsare not so evident in the case of MTST.

2. Cooperation yes (or maybe),co-optationno: state-civil society partnership and itslimits2.1. When 'participation' tarns into trapThat 'good intentions are not enough.' isdemonstrated by the fact that not only


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334 CINVOL.10, No. 3delibera te inten.tions to 'do mestica te' civi.1society can harm social activism but alsosome forms of participation, which at firstglance seem to be more than just c oo pta tion ,but can create new problems by virtue ofignoran ce regarding l.ocal. cultures, localparticularities in terms of power structures,and so on. In a book published a couple ofyears ago (which.has provoke d som e irri-tatedreactions), whose au thors are not swayed b ythe almo st magical power of word s such. as' yarticipati.on' and 'empowerment', y artici-pation was considered even as a 'tyranny'(see Choke and YKothari, 2001).How ever, even if the limits and dangers towh.ich authors like Bill Cooke an.d U.m:aKotbari point ou t (Coo ke and Kothari., 2001;see also Coo ke, 2001; Kothari., 2001) can notbe und eresti.mated, th.e kind of situation th eyare dealing with presents some similaritiesbut also impor tant differences in corn-parison.with the ch.allen.ge of 'participa tion.' in ametropolis such as SZo Paulo or Rio deJaneiro. While th ey are discussiilg a situationw hi dl co uld be d escribed as a classic 'cultureshock' ('we, westerners, you, natives in thissmal.1 African [:Asian, Latin A.m erican]village'), I am talking about the relationsbetween urban poor and governments,N G O s an d 'their' experts in the big cities of alargely industrialized and to a Zaqe extentWestern country, but socially highly unjustand unequal.The existing literature tells us that consis-tent large-scale participation is possible inspite of m any ob stacles, and the best exampleworldwide has been Porto Alegre's 'partici-pa tor y budgeting'-or at least it was till2004 .~ In terms of organization, PortoAl egre's 'participatory budgeting' coilsists ofa series of meetings in the course of whichthe city hall firstly explains its actions andaccounts for the previous year, submits to theattending citizens its investment plan for thecurrent year and projects the potentialfinancial resources for th e next year (March/April); later (April/May), the number ofdelegates of each of the 16 areas (regi6es) inwhich the city was divided for the pu rposes

of the participatory process (as well as thedelegates of so-called 'thematic plenarysessi.ons', wh.i.ch defi.ne secto ral p riorities) isdetermi.ned, and th e Co uncil for Participa-tory Budgeting (Conselho do 0rg:arnentoP a ~ i c i p a t i ~ o l C O P ).s elected. C O P isformed by two counci.l.lors elected by eachregizo, two couilcill.ors elected by each'thematic plenary sessi.on', one representativeof the civil servants' trade union, two othersrepresenting the city officials in general.,another one appointed by the municipal.federation of ne.igh bourh ood associ-ationsand two represen.tatives from the govern-menttWho do no t have the righ t to vote,th.eir task is to act as advisors to the council.-lors on. technical questions. While the de1.e-gates contact ordinary people throughsmaller, informal meetings organized by th.epopulation itself and discuss their needs inthe face of a possible investment capacityinformed to them by the local government,the Council's task is the preparation of theformal budget proposal which has to be sentto the mu nicipal parliament for approval (see,for details about Porto Alegre's experience:Abe rs, 2000; Souza, 2002).Neverthele ss, even in. rel.atj.011 to suchsuccessful experiences we have to becautious, considering w hat I sugg est is 'struc-ta rd l co-optation'. 'Structural. co-op tation.' isa Damocles' sword over every social move-ment which accepts to take part in institu-tionalized cbannels of participation. Classicalcriticisms regarding partici-pation, such. asthose addressed by Arnstein (1969), notwith-standing its importance, are insufficient, forthey usually deal with what could beun.derstood as more or less deliberate (and'individualized') attempts of co-optation andmanipulation. No t o nly as a result of m anip-ulation by politicians, but also by virtue ofthe 'subtle' influence of the state machineryon civil society's organizations (for instance,a gradual 'adjustment' of the agendas an ddynamics of social movements to the agendaa n d dynamics of the state) and their militants('seduction of pow er'), social mov ements'critical sense and energy can diminish-and


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2.2. Lessonsfrom razil: participntorybudgeting and the 'ivrban reform'Por to Alegre's parti cipato ry budgeting, wit11its several positive outcomes (see Abers,2000; Souza, 2002), dem.onstrates that institu -tionalized popular participation matters andthat it is worthwhile uader certai.n circum-stances. Howe ver, the vuhlerability and som eweaknesses of this experience can sho w usano the r 'lesson' as well-name]-y, th at socialmovements must try to conceive their ownstrategies and implement their own agenda,as auton.omously as possible in face ot thestate.On the one side, Workers Party's politi-cians and militants always defended that itcould be dangerous to bound 'participatorybudgeting' through a municipal law-whichwould have to be voted by a largely conser-vative Municipal Parliament, so that anyproposal in this sense presented by the exec-utive could be stroilgly modifi-ed for worse.Moreover, o ne of the most important virtuesof Porto Alegre's 'participatory budgeti.ngJwas always its flexibility, so that it was possi-

ble for delegates and councillors to improvethe 'game rules' man). ti.mes since 1989. O nthe o ther side, the electoral. defeat of a politi-cal pa rty (in this case, the defeat of th e PT atthe electioils in 2004) can. t11reate.n even anexperience which seemed to be consolidatedand wh ich became a s ourc e of inspiratio11 formany others throughout the world. Fro m nlypoint of view, the solu tioi ~ or this kind ofvulnerability does not lie in formal laws, as Ialready stressed in an earlier work (Souza,2002). Th.e best (though of course notperfect) 'im.m.unization' against an interrup-don. or a weakening of this kind of process isin th.e hand s of civil society itself, which m ustbe able to dernoilstrate that i.t will not toler-ate a political regressioil i.n this matter.-How ever, his is no t sufficient. If civil,societyadjusts itself to official, institutionalizedparticipatory arenas to the point that socialmove~n en.ts o no t have an. auton omo us lifeoutside these arenas (as this has been mo re o rless the case in Porto Alegre, even if not

entirely), civil society becomes a kind of'hosrage', no t only of a governm ent (whichcan blackmail ci.141. society sending messagessuch as 'if you do not elect the party onceagain, this wonderful experience can cease toexist'), bu t of th e state apparatus as such.As far as Porto Alegre is concerned, wehave to wait to see what the next years willteach us in terms of mor e concrete or specific'lessons'. It is still. to o early t o kn.ow to w hatextent local civil society can defend itsconquests. Anyway, the first conclusionsoutli..nedabove have a general character.A simi.l.ar, bu t a t t he same tim e different,'lesson' call be extracted from the fate of th.estruggle for ' u ~ b a n reform'. Even ifperceivjng the 1.im.its of the represen tativedemocratic regime which was reintroducedin 1.985 after m ore tha n 20 years of militaryrule, a pragma tic ].eft-wing approach. to plan-ning emerged in the mid-1980s in Brazil,when some scholars began to advocate areforma urbana ('urban reform'). Thisexpression does not mean., in the contempo -rary parlance of Brazilian. social movementsand progressi-ve scholars (whose roots lie

already in the 1960s), just a reshaping of tbespace through 'spatial surgery' and zoning-that is, the search for new spatial forms and anew spatial ord er which c oi~ trib ute o 'opti.-mi2.e' urban. functions (traffic and mobili.ty,compatibility of la i~ d ses, an d so on) as well.as to the beauty of landscape. The primarypurpose of the 'urban reform' strategy is tochange h ow the prodrtction of space ir regu-lated (on the basis of a new balance ofpower), and it aims concretely at overcom-ing, or at least at a substantial reduction of,certain typical problems of city life in B r a d ,such as land speculation, residential segrega-tion and lack of affordable housing for thepoor.Ma ny of the master plans which have beellprepared since the beginning of the 1990s inBrazi.1ia.n cities show at least some degree ofinfluence by 'urban reform' principles.Whereas technocratic planning aims at a'well-ordere d' an.d 'efficient city' (f rom acapitalistic point of view, of course), 'urban


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reform' has quite different goals: tenure regu-larization and physical upgrading in poorresidential areas (shanty towns and otherirregular worki ng-class settlements) andreduction of resiciential segregation and landspeculation, among other priorities related tosocial justice. In this context, a useful tool isthe utilization of property tax progressivelyover time. As far as zoning-which is surelyplanning's best-known instrument-isconcerned, technocratic planners work withit primarily to reach 'order', while 'urbanreform'-oriented professional planners useland use management tools for purposes suchas identification and classj ficatiOII of sy ecificspaces according to their social situation aiidpublic interest (for ii~stance, zones corre-sponding to areas which need physicalupgrading and tenure regularization, zonesof special interest for environmental protec-tion purposes, and areas where land is keptvacant due to speculation).Technocratic master plans follow by defi-nition a 'top-down' style; they express amore or less authoritarian balance of poweras well as an authoritarian mentality on thepart of professional planners, who are underthese circumstances not committed to anypopular participation in the planning process.From the technocratic point of view, theinvolvement of laypersons in planning is notdesirable, since planning is seen to be atec,bnical matter which 1x1s to be undertaken011 the basis of 'rationality' and which cannotbe usually understood by ordinary citizens.In contrast to this view, 'urban reform'-oriented urban planning has been presentedby left--wing professional planners as a'participatory' one.Ho.wewer, the 'urban reforni' mainstreamis characterized today by what T called '2ef~-wiug tec/~uoc~atisrn' Souza, 2002). 'Left-wing technocratism' corresponds to acontradiction in the context of which 'toomuch' attention is paid to technical instru-ments and exaggerated expectations areraised in relation to the possibilities andpotentialities of the formal legal and institu-tional framework (such as the national

M.jnistry of Cities created in 2003 underpresident Luis Inicio Lula da Si.lva and withwhich several 'urhaii reform'-oriented plan-ners were or still are involved), while muchless attention is devoted to subjects such. asthe rel.atively new challenges for popularparti.cipation (for instance, territorial controlof rn.any fl-zvelas in cities such as liio deJaneiro and SHo Paulo by drug traffickers),the 'microphysics of power' aiid the cultural

r in terven-rn.beddedn.essof state-led plan.ninb '.ti0n.s. Furthermore, even reflection ahouttools and schemes for popular participationin plann.ing has received much less attentionon the part of most 'urban reform'-orientedplanning theoreticians tl~.an. ther technicalinstruments, and it is disappointing (butnevertheless symptomatic) that the concretespace dedicated to dealing wi.th popularyarticipati.on in the framework of manyprogressive master plans is very small., andsometimes it is ~nen tioned n rather vagueterms or even in the sense of a mere coasulta-tion (that is, the kind of 'participation' wh.ichArnstein [I 9691 correctly considered i11 h.erfamous article as 'tokenis.m.').The fate of the strugg1.e for an 'urbanreform' in. Brazil teaches us about what canhaypenif a progressive strategy is developedand suut~orted nainlv bv scholars and theL J J(~lliddle-class) taff of NGOs, while the poorand their grassroots organizations only playa very secondary role in terms of strategy-building and j.ntellectua1 elaborati.011 (as far as'urban reform' is concerned, this was a prob-lem already in the 1.980s, see Silva, 1.990;Souza, ZOOOa, 2002, but only in the 1990s didit become more evident, as the acadenicmainstream became inereasin-gly divorcedfrom. social. movernen.ts). 'Urban reform' stillis an important strategy, and many ideas an.dinstrumen.ts are surely very valuable, but it islargely un.kl~ow.nlnong most Brazilians andillany of its formerly more or less radical.supporters (both scholars and NGO people)have turned i.nto 'left-wing technocrats' inthe last 15 years-although most of themprobably believe they still embody a genu-inely progressive approach (by the way,


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338 C INVOL.10, No. 3some of them have been working for theBrazilian Ministry of Cities in the co ntext ofthe '~ ~ainna be-left-wing ' ut in fact centristWorkers Party government since 2003).Fortunately, the sem-teto movement is alsocom mitted to an 'urban reform'-one ofMTST's 'war cries' is precisely 'na lutd pelareforma ilrbana' ('fighting for an urbanreform'), and the sem-tero activists representthe real g rassroots side of this s trategy, tryingto overcome the limits not only of the legalframework itself, but also those of 'left-wingtechnocratism' by means of pressures frombelow as well as independent initiatives anddirect action.The main 'lesson' frolln both the experi-ences of 'participatory bu dgeting' an d thestruggle for an 'urban reform' seems to be tilefollowing: social movements remain vulnera-ble in th e face of tbe state appara tus as lon g asthey abdicate to think and to act autono-mously-and that iilcludes concrete pro po s-als regarding u rban planning. Participati.on ininstitutionalized participatory channe1.s canbe useful. under certain ci rc~l~ nsta nces ,uteven if t he partner is a 'truly progressive andopen government' social movements have tobe cautious aid cultivate their capacity of(self-)critici.sm. Tech nical h.elp from progre s-sive intellectuals an d pro fessional. plann erscan be very welcome and necessary, butsocial m.ovements cannot abdicate colntrol ofthe agenda of discussions to m iddle-classacademics and NGO s-or the state appara-ms. Even. if th e 'partner' is a prog ressiveparty (that is, one which is at least at thebeginning consistently committed to socialchange and empowerment of civil society),this cannot prevent civil society from beingco-op ted, i.n fact because every political part yis already a 'state-centred' structure, an devery progressive political party must itselffight against the corruptive forces whichernanate from state yower in terms of a trendto conservative adjustment and 'conflictmanagement' rather than to the overcomingof deep social contradictions and structures.It belongs to th.e nature of a lion. to devo urother animals, even if it was tanled.

3. Conclusions

Criticisms have been addressed against classi-cal. regulatory urban planning on the part ofnon-conservative scholars (mostly fi-om aMarxist perspective) since the 1960s andespecially since the 1970s, and o n the part ofneo-liberal analysts since the 1980s. Wh ileconservative scholars nowad ays attack cl.assi-cal regulatory planning because it would betoo 'rigid' and i.t would lack 'fl.exibili.ty' inorder to contribute to th.e 'co.mpetitiveness'of the city in a globalized wo rld b y means ofattracting investments, left-wing scholarsused to put p1annin.g and planners undersusp.icion becau se i.t wo uld serve th e interestsof the ruling classes. As far as the neo-liberalcriticism is concerned, it is a heavily bi.asedone which has been 1-argelyused as an argu-ment to 0btai.n mo re and more co ncessionsand advantages for private business interestsof all sorts. :I11 contrast to that, the non-conservative criticism seems to be genera1l.ycorrect; however, it was often 'forgotten' bymany radical geographers and Marxist soci-ologists in the past n ot only that even state-led planning can be sometimes genuinelyprogressive (what some radical scholarsfinally began to acknowledge: see Harvey'sopinion about Porto Alegre marvey,20001-and Po rto Alegre's pa rti dp at or ybudgeting is at the end of the day nothingelse tha n particiy ator y u rban managem entand planning), but also that civil society canand shall develop its own alternative pl.ansand (socio-spatial) strategi-es.Planning as such is neither conservativenor progressive, at least not a priori. Ofcourse, pl-an ning is n-ever 'value ne utral', bu tits ethical and political com .mitment dependson. tlne conten .ts and the n atur e of conc reteactors, historical circumstan.ces, proposalsand actions. As a comparison we could saythat, although inost state-led schools andeducating systems are inherently conserva-tive and authoritarian, nobody would cometo the idea that education as suck is some-thing bad, since we know that (for instance)Paulo Freire's well-known 'pedagogy of the


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oppressed' also belongs t o th e domai11 of'education'. Since urban pla nning is anattempt to chan.ge spatial organization andsocial relations in t he city, an.d since the stateal)paratus is far from being a 'neutral judge'which always acts to defend the 'comtnongood' and 'public interest', social mo vem entshave the necessity t o develop an d (so long asit is possible) to imp le~ llen t their ownalternative solutions.The German writer and essayist HansMagnus Enzensberger used the expression'molecular civil war' (molekularerBiirgerkrieg) at the beginning of the 1990s(Enzensberger, 1993) in order to describe thesj uat ion of increasing conflict an d violencewhich can be observed in big cities both ofthe 'First ' and of the 'Third World' . A nothe rGerman author, the sociologist Robert K urz,wro te also at the beginning of the last decadea bo ok w hose title is Th e C ollapse ofModernization (Der Kollaps der. Modern-isiermg [Kurz, 1992]) , and we can see thatEnzens berger's 'molecular civil war' isparticularly true in relation to the countriesin whicll the ideological promis e of 'develop-ment' in the framework of global capitalismwas frustrated and 'economic m odernization'was abor ted and /o r a ccom pa~~ iedy terrible'collateral damages'. H ow eve r, seiniperiph-era1 countries such as Brazil, Argentina,Mexico and South Africa have interestingpeculiarities precisely regarding th.e magni-tu de an d com plexi.ty of 'urb an cri.sis': thesecountries are neither 'consolidated represen-tative democracies' ( ~ n o re recisely, 'con.soli-dat ed 1-iberal ol.i.garchies') no r 'quas i-states '(in contrast to many typical peripheral coun-tri-es, especial.ly in sub-Saharan Africa). I n thebig cities and metropolises of those countrieswe can see a kind of 'low-intensity statedissolution' at the local level (due to wide-spread corrupti-on, from politicians to thepolice, as well. as by virtu e of th e fo rmatio nof 'criminal territorial enclaves' for example:'territorialization' of favelas by drug-traf-ficking o rganizations in. Ri o de Janeiro-orthe emergence of alternative economiccircuits) ; however, the state was no t sim ply

replaced through 'w arlords' (although it isoften. cl~allenge d b y 'warlords' at the'microlocal' level., as it is the case particu larlyin :Ria de Jane iro).In spi te of the m any problems whid l canbe observed in metropolises such as Kio deJan eiro a11.d SZo :P a~ llo , he re are not on.lyproblems there, but also solutions which a rebeing pro pose d a nd t o s0m.e extent alsoimplemented both. by the state and b y socialmovements (sometimes together witli thelocal state apparatus, sometimes despite thestate, sometimes against the state). Probablyit is even. easier for social movements incountries such as Brazil (at least to someexten t) to con.cei.veand impleinent alternativestrategies regarding spatial organization, notonly because absence and inefficiency of thestate apparatus ~nnakes enga gem ent of civilsociety more necessary than in Euro pe or theUSA, but also because urban law is not soeffective or respected as, say, in Germany orth e UK-apparent 'chaos' also means biggerroom for manoeuvre for the people on theground. H ence, in the middle of a swamp ofviolence and despair we can also find little,exotic and delicate f lowers. Now adays, someLatin American urban social movementssuc11 as the sem-teto movement in Brazil andthe pique term in Argentina are dem onstrat-ing that social rn ovem e~lts can and shallconceive and to some extent even implemelltcornpl.ex an d radical socio-spa tial strategies,thus carrying out a kin.d of 'alternative','grassroots urban planning' which is qriiteoften committed t o the development of truly'horizontal', non-hi.erarch.ica1 self-manage-ment structures.

Notes

1 Making the Invisible Visible, a thought-provokingbook edited by Leonie Sandercock, demonstratesthat important exceptions of course exist. In thisbook, and particularly in Sandercock's'Introduction: Framing Insurgent Historiographiesfor Planning' (Sandercock, 1998)' one can find a'de-statization' of the idea of planning in favour ofa broader approach which is similar to my own


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340 CITYVor. 10, No. 3proposal. However, this book offers a discussion of'insurgent historiographies' of planning asnarratives of reactions against (and alternatives to)state-led planning on the part of minority groups ofcivil society in very general terms, whereas theproactive role of social movemenfs in terms ofconception and implementation of planningstrategies (which is the central concern in thispaper) is not necessarily emphasized.

2 The state apparatus is not a kind of monolithicstructure free of contradictions, but a 'materialcondensation of a relationship of forces'(Poulantzas, 1980, p. 1531, that is, theexpression of different pressures-from aboveand From below. Surely, since the state issfrucfurally committed' to the reproduction of thestatus quo (in ohe r words, to oppression), stateintervention tends to privilege the interests of theruling classes; however, the state can be underspecial circumstances, that is in specificconjvncfures (as a particular governmenf]con rolled by more or less progressive forces andeven influenced by social movements-especiallyat the local level.3 It is convenient to differentiate between socialactivism and social movement. Social activismcorresponds to a much broader concept-a type oflargely 'organized' and essentially public collectiveaction, and thus different from, say, plundering orparliamentary lobbies-while social movement is aspecial kind of social activism: namely, one whichis particularly ambitious and critical. Althoughseveral relevant authors also reserve some kind of'special sfatus' for the concept of social movement(see, for instance, Castells, 1983 and Touraine,19731, many authors use the word 'movement' in arather indiscriminate way. However, different froma 'parochial' local activism which operates more orless as a mere pressure group in order to preservecertain privileges or obtain some gains in thegeneral framework of the economic and politicalstatus quo, and without criticizing status quo assuch, social movements act as 'militantparticularisms' which are at the same timeimbedded in place-specific experiences andcommitted to more general, 'universal' ethicalvalues and broader political goals: a specificquestion (racism, unfair distribution of land, genderoppression, and so on) may define collectiveidentity and the primary agenda, but beyond thisspecificit)/ the general societal con ext or at leastsome of its aspects ('modernization', the myth ofcapitalist 'development', representative'democracy', globalization, etc.) is always underfire (Souza, 2 0 0 0 ~ ~002). The conceptualboundaries bebe en a 'mere' activism and a'proper' movement are surely not very precise,since reality itself is quite 'fuzzy' in this regard, but

some distinction can be useful anyway, for the sakeof conceptua\ clari y.4 See, about the piquetero movement: Kohan(2002), Massetti (2004) and Chatterton (2005).

5 From a socio-political viewpoint, there is adifference b eb een shun ~y-town esidents(Favelados) and sem-fefo. Although they are allsquatters in a broader sense, historically faver'asemerge either 'spontaneously' or sometimes underguidance and protection of populist politicianslooking for future electoral support, while the sem-teto movement is highly 'politicized' from a criticalstandpoint. In the remaining of this text 1 will use thePortuguese expression sem-teto nstead of sqvaffers,in order to avoid misunderstandings.

6 In contrast to squatters in many European cities,who are usually young people, quite oftenuniversity students, in Brazilian cities like S i o Pauloand Rio de Janeiro the maiority of sem-fefocomprise poor people-similarly to the Argentinianpiqueferos-althoug h squattingby sem-teto isnormally supported and c ~ r g a n i z e d y studentswith a middle-class or lower middle-classbackground.7 Socio-spafial strategies are strategies to changeboth social relations an d spatial organization. Infact, they invite us to understand that thetransformation of social relations can usually not beachieved without a correspondent and appropriatetransformation of space.

8 In a text prepared by MTST's leadership formilitants, one can read that sem-teto '[ ...I have boundertake a careful planning and a survey whichcomprise a correct analysis of vacant areas: theirsituation in terms of the existing zoning, theirownership, their fiscal situation, and so on. W e donot intend to reproduce the chaotic andunbalanced logic of capitalist urban expansion,which pushes poor people to areas located faraway, including environmental and river sourceprotection areas. Moreover, an adequateknowledge about the property owner is necessaryto avoid unexpected reactions as well as to plan atactics which permits people to stay on place'(MTST, 2004, p. 5).9 'Pariicipatory budgeting' was implemented inPorto Alegre as the Workers Party (Partido dosTrabalhadores/PT) came to power in 1989,although civil society (the municipal federation ofneig hbourhood associations, UAMPA) hadalready claimed for a democratization ofmunicipal budgeting process a couple of yearsbefore. Due to several reasons (for instance,widespread disappoinhent with PT under thepresidency of Luis lnacio Lula da Silva), PortoAlegre's PT lost the municipal elections (by a smallmargin) in 2004 for the first time after 16years,and since 200 5 the city has been governed by a


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342 CITYVOL. 0,No. 3Pruijt, H. (2003 ) 'Is the instjtutionalization of urban

movements inevitable?A comparison of theopportunities for sustained squatting in New YorkCity and Amsterdam', International Journal ofUrban and Regional Research 27(1), pp. 133-1 57.

Sandercock, L. (ed.) (1 998) Mak ing fhe Invisible Ksibie :AMulticultural History of Planning. Berkeley andLondon: University of California Press.

Santos, C. N. F. (1981 Movimentos urbanos no Rio dek n e i r o . Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.Silva, A. A. da (1990) 'A luta pelos direitos urbanos:

novas representacijes de cidade e c idadania',Espaco & Debates, 30(X), pp. 28-41 .

Souza, M. L. de (2000a) 0 desafio mefropolitano. Umestudo sobre a problemaficcr sbcio-espacial nusmetrbpoles brasileiras. Riode Janei o: BertrandBrasil.Souza, M. L. de (2000b) Urban development on thebasis of autonomy: a politico-philosophical andethical framework for urban planning andmanagement', Ethics, Place an d Environmenf 3(2),pp. 187-20 1 .

Souza, M. L. de f 200 ) 'Metropolitan deconcentration,socio-Political ragmentation and extended

suburbanisation: Brazilian urbanisation in the1980s and I 90sf, Geoforum 32, pp. 437-447.Souza, M. L. de (2002) Muda r a c idade. Umaintroducdo crifica ao planejamento e u gesMourbanos. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.

Souza, M. L. de (2005) 'Urban planning in an ageof fear: the case OF Rio de Janeiro', InfernationalDevelopmenf Planning Review (IDPR) 27(1), pp.1-18.

Touraine, A. (1 973) Production de Ia soci6fG. Paris:Seuil.

Zibechi, R. ( 1 999) La mirada horizontal. Movimientossociales y emancipation. Montevideo: Nordan-Comunidad.

Zibechi, R. (2005) Qu 6 hay d e cornfin enfre piqueterosy zapatisfas?, hitp: //w.voltairenet.org/article1 2351 6.html (accessed 28 November 2005).

itfarcelo Lopes de Souza is at the FederalUriicfersityof Rio de Janeiro, Deparrment ofGeography.E-mail: mloperdesouza@terr~c,OYTI.br

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