Metropolitan governance in the context of dynamic urbanization: the case of Brazil (original) (raw)
Related papers
Antipode, 2013
Despite regulatory and financial rollout of the state at a number of scales, and a strengthening of the institutional framework that guides territorial planning and management, Brazilian metropolitan governance continues to be characterized by fragmented and relatively competitive organizational structures. Likewise, the Brazilian metropolis is marked by economic dynamism and intense socio-spatial and environmental contradictions. Much of the mainstream literature on metropolitan governance has emphasized a natural "optimum" scale for planning and management in city-regions, articulated by public and private stakeholders aimed at the coordinated delivery of economic, social and environmental services. Combining the literature on new state spaces and critical Brazilian urban-regional studies, this paper provides an alternative framework to understand the impasse of Brazilian metropolitan areas, which is grounded within a geo-historic reading of the contradictory projects and strategies of the developmental state and the contested nature of metropolitan scale itself. Resumo: Apesar de um aumento da atuação do Estado, nas multiplas escalas, no campo da regulação e do financiamento, e também considerando o fortalecimento do arcabouço institutional que norteia o planejamento e gestão territorial, a governança metropolitana brasileira ainda se caracteriza pela presença de estruturas relativamente fragmentadas e competitivas. Da mesma forma, a metrópole brasileira é marcada pela confluência entre o dinamismo econômico e as contradições socioespaciais e ambientais. Grande parte da literatura hegemônica sobre governança metropolitana têm enfatizada a existência de uma escala natural, e "ótica", para nortear o planejamento e a gestão em cidades-regiões, que seria articulada por agentes públicos e privados em torno da provisão coordenada de uma serie de serviços econômicos, sociais e ambientais. Procurando estabelecer um diálogo entre a literatura sobre escalas e regimes de organização e atuação territorial do Estado e os estudos urbano-regionais brasileiros críticos, apresentamos um arcabouço teórico alternativo para compreender os impasses que cercam as áreas metropolitanas brasileiras. A perspectiva apresentada neste artigo é baseada numa leitura geográfica e histórica acerca dos projetos e das estratégias contraditórios do Estado desenvolvimentista, e da natureza contestada da própria escala metropolitana.
In the globalized age, largely populated metropolitan areas, typically bringing together a number of different cities and extending over wide territories, face growing social, economic and environmental problems. International experience shows that, faced with resource constraints and conflicting interests, metropolitan management is, by and large, mostly ineffective while contributing to aggravate existing inequalities. Having to face rapid urban growth, housing shortages, informality and poverty, the Brazilian experience in metropolitan planning also reveals serious shortcomings. It can be argued that, since 1973, reflecting changing tendencies of the central administration, metropolitan management in Brazil underwent three stages. The first was a developmental phase, which spanned decades of centralized planning, and in which public agencies had access to a stream of financial resources. The second was a phase of neoliberal policies, which promoted decentralization and discredited centralized planning, and in which metropolitan agencies received reduced financial support. The third is a more recent, neo-developmental phase, which tends towards decentralization and social participation, and in which agencies are faced with insufficient resources and spreading problems. The lack of top-down directives and the absence of a national urban policy, as well as the 1988 National Constitution determination that the states establish metropolitan regions, gave rise to a multiplication in the number of these official agglomerations. Among various tendencies, four types of agencies and institutional provisions emerge, represented in the following metropolitan regions: Salvador, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte and the Great ABC Intercity Consortium 3. Aside from regional inequalities, each will have distinct historical paths which emerge in different social, economic and political situations and contribute to produce a setting which brings together resources and drawbacks. The assembly of institutional and political conditions that support the creation and implementation of common endeavors in a given setting can be understood as governance. One of the assumptions of this study is that qualified institutionalization, social organization and wide participation are factors in building a governance system, which occurs through the provision of public functions of common interest and the formulation of a shared metropolitan agenda. Hence, the objective of this article is to identify the scope and limits of different metropolitan governance arrangements in Brazil. An approximation to the metropolitan region of Montreal, whose regional authority dates back from the 1970s, guided an exploratory research including visits and interviews with key influential groups related to metropolitan planning. The aim was to elicit criteria expressing governance
Metropolitan regions in Brazil have entered a global competition and are within the competence of the state governments, since the country's new Constitution was approved in 1988, when a retraction of the federal government on metropolitan issues occurred. This paper focuses on the institutional arrangements and innovative experiences of Brazilian metropolitan regions, which currently count over thirty, whether their management structure obey a vertical model or inter-municipal consortia. Through a comparative method research of some recent metropolitan experiences, analyzed issues include: a) representative structure, b) governance structure and c) urban planning and management competences. Providing this background, this paper addresses innovative forms of metropolitan institutional arrangements and proposals that can be constructed.
2017
The exponential demographic increase of the last century and the transformation of the cities, from industrial to service providers, added to the phenomenon of conurbation. In addition, the new social, environmental, economic, political and cultural dynamics of close cities, challenged the traditional municipal power and required a collaborative new management framework. Global cities became metropolitan areas. Issues of local urban interest are now of regional preoccupation. Governmental institutional frameworks and urban planning were not designed to match this new socioeconomic and environmental metropolitan order. This paper deals with the legal challenges of creating metropolitan governance structures comparing France and Brazil. This is a useful comparison in the sense that the demand for metropolitan governance structure is shared by different countries despite the differences in the way their systems of government are structured. France is a unitary State, and Brazil is stru...
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper, 2021
In 2015, Brazil enacted the Statute of the Metropolis (Federal Law No. 13,089) to regulate the establishment of metropolitan areas and regional public policies throughout the country. This research comparatively analyzes land use planning practices in metropolitan areas — Baixada Santista and Vale do Rio Cuiabá — before and after the enactment of the Statute. Based on historical institutionalism and legislative clustergrams, the research aims to understand whether the adoption of the Statute of the Metropolis has influenced or changed land use planning practices focusing on metropolitan land conflicts. The results of this study are expressed through two divergent processes, as the areas selected herein entailed different metropolitan contexts and strategies. While Baixada Santista has years of experience with metropolitan governance, the promise that certain provisions of the Statute of the Metropolis might lead to greater technical advances, more consistent proposals for solutions to metropolitan land conflicts, and restrictions to the interests of the unbridled real estate market, was not fulfilled in this case. The analysis of municipal master plans in the metropolitan area of Baixada Santista before and after the Statute’s enactment demonstrates that post-2015 municipal master plans saw an increase in density, with more content, but almost the same metropolitan-related content as before 2015. By contrast, the metropolitan area of Vale do Rio Cuiabá has a very short history of metropolitan governance, yet over the past few years it has advanced considerably during the development of its metropolitan plan to incorporate the tenets of the Statute of the Metropolis. However, termination, in early 2019, of the metropolitan agency of Vale do Rio Cuiabá has made it hard to recognize whether its metropolitan plan will be folded into future municipal master plans. Despite the promise that 2015 would establish a legacy that favored a culture of planning in Brazil, critical decisions made later limited any possibility of positive feedback — or self-reinforcement — of metropolitan governance in the country, including federal legislation in 2018 altering the content of the Statute of the Metropolis and state actions weakening or terminating metropolitan agencies in 2019. These events signal the rise of a more neoliberal vision of a minimal state in Brazil, and the loss of many of the institutional and technical achievements in metropolitan areas since the 1990s. Beyond the promise of the Statute of the Metropolis, this research offers an analytical model for monitoring and assessment of future metropolitan efforts over time. It became clear, though, that the original scope and promise of the analytical framework require more time to be effective. More time is needed for more municipal master plans enacted after 2015 in different metropolitan areas to fully embrace the theory on historical institutionalism. However, this study serves as an alert for processes to come that variables sensitive to metropolitan planning may not be effective, or may not continue, due to various factors. The main goals of the research were to understand the limitations of implementing the Statute of the Metropolis, and to highlight possible outcomes in upcoming metropolitan planning processes in Brazil.
Lincoln Institute working paper, 2021
In 2015, Brazil enacted the Statute of the Metropolis (Federal Law No. 13,089) to regulate the establishment of metropolitan areas and regional public policies throughout the country. This research comparatively analyzes land use planning practices in metropolitan areas — Baixada Santista and Vale do Rio Cuiabá — before and after the enactment of the Statute. Based on historical institutionalism and legislative clustergrams, the research aims to understand whether the adoption of the Statute of the Metropolis has influenced or changed land use planning practices focusing on metropolitan land conflicts. The results of this study are expressed through two divergent processes, as the areas selected herein entailed different metropolitan contexts and strategies. While Baixada Santista has years of experience with metropolitan governance, the promise that certain provisions of the Statute of the Metropolis might lead to greater technical advances, more consistent proposals for solutions to metropolitan land conflicts, and restrictions to the interests of the unbridled real estate market, was not fulfilled in this case. The analysis of municipal master plans in the metropolitan area of Baixada Santista before and after the Statute’s enactment demonstrates that post-2015 municipal master plans saw an increase in density, with more content, but almost the same metropolitan-related content as before 2015. By contrast, the metropolitan area of Vale do Rio Cuiabá has a very short history of metropolitan governance, yet over the past few years it has advanced considerably during the development of its metropolitan plan to incorporate the tenets of the Statute of the Metropolis. However, termination, in early 2019, of the metropolitan agency of Vale do Rio Cuiabá has made it hard to recognize whether its metropolitan plan will be folded into future municipal master plans. Despite the promise that 2015 would establish a legacy that favored a culture of planning in Brazil, critical decisions made later limited any possibility of positive feedback — or self-reinforcement — of metropolitan governance in the country, including federal legislation in 2018 altering the content of the Statute of the Metropolis and state actions weakening or terminating metropolitan agencies in 2019. These events signal the rise of a more neoliberal vision of a minimal state in Brazil, and the loss of many of the institutional and technical achievements in metropolitan areas since the 1990s. Beyond the promise of the Statute of the Metropolis, this research offers an analytical model for monitoring and assessment of future metropolitan efforts over time. It became clear, though, that the original scope and promise of the analytical framework require more time to be effective. More time is needed for more municipal master plans enacted after 2015 in different metropolitan areas to fully embrace the theory on historical institutionalism. However, this study serves as an alert for processes to come that variables sensitive to metropolitan planning may not be effective, or may not continue, due to various factors. The main goals of the research were to understand the limitations of implementing the Statute of the Metropolis, and to highlight possible outcomes in upcoming metropolitan planning processes in Brazil.
Brazilian Political Science Review, 2013
Public policies are produced by connections between several actors, within institutional environments and crossing organizational boundaries, but detailed analyses of the environments in which politics occur are relatively rare in Brazil. I believe the concept of governance could help to bridge this gap. However, this concept has different meanings and has been circulated in Latin America with quite confusing and cacophonic meanings. In this analytical essay, I build a definition of governance based both on local debates and the recent international literature, which can be of use to study urban policies in Brazil, going beyond government but specifying the elements under investigation.
International Seminar Governing the Meteropolis, 2012
In Brazil, the synergy of processes of decentralization and globalization have come to a climax during the 1990’s. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution adopted decentralization and municipalization as a rule to its federation system and the increase of globalization forces over the country, mainly affected metropolitan regions. An overview points out a tributary competition, the so called fiscal war, which engendered competitive and predatory processes that have downgraded the importance of the Federal State. An enterprise attitude adopted by state level governments in order to attract economic activities and maximize their local taxing incomes focused in municipalities within metropolitan regions, or even the metropolises themselves. A comparative research is pursued in this paper within two metropolitan regions in Brazil as to their metropolitan management, facing forces of decentralization and globalization: Belo Horizonte and Salvador. In both cases, through their different governance models, identified in this study, while the first seeks to agglutinate a set of public and private actors to integrate metropolitan plans and programs and give voice to public participation, the latter, Salvador, has an incipient articulation in governmental spheres and public participation. An exploratory investigation considers that metropolitan regions that have institutional arrangements which promote articulations in horizontal and vertical partnerships and insert public participation tools in their governance agenda are more prone than others to reap the benefits of collaborative governance. The outcome of these issues is analyzed through the application of two urban legal frameworks in Belo Horizonte and Salvador: Participatory Budgeting and Public Consortia Law. The practice of these two mechanisms, the governance structure of the metropolitan regions and the articulations within municipalities of the same metropolitan region suggest the role of metropolitan governance as a less destructive form of global insertion. A comparative research is pursued within two metropolitan regions in Brazil as to their metropolitan management, facing forces of decentralization and globalization: Belo Horizonte and Salvador. Through the application of two urban legal frameworks, Participatory Budgeting and Public Consortia Law, the outcome of this study reveals that public participation tools in a metropolitan region governance agenda is more prone to reap the benefits of collaborative governance.