“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather then an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the process of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” – David Harvey, The Right to the City (2008), a postface to Social Justice and the City

I moved to São Paulo in 2010 inspired by collaborative place making, eager to study ways in which favelas are “upgraded”, creating more livable, humane, and connected neighborhoods. After a diverse and eye opening year in which I completed a post-graduate course in public housing design at Escola da Cidade, led a youth arts collective in a favela in the north periphery of São Paulo, and investigated several reurbanization projects throughout the city I felt optimistic about collective public space making and the opportunity architects have to co-design reurbanization and urban upgrade projects. Then, I witnessed reurbanization begin. I watched children climb over the wreckage of homes left in a state of half demolition and listened to families tell stories of how long it took to build their home, unsure of where they would go next.

Despejo na Favela, a samba written in 1973 by Adoriran Barbosa, a musician from São Paulo reflects what I am experiencing in the city. I realized that I was investigating a very narrow slice of an enormous urban dilemma whose web is just as intertwined with the politics of capital and hierarchies of knowledge as it is to punctual architectural actions that reform open sewers and pave roads. I began to feel reurbanization’s potential to oppress rather than liberate, to understand the stark contrast between slick design boards and a living urban reality, to see through photos of community meetings, and to question the authenticity of community design processes. I am questioning to what extent reurbanization is a need. What is truly necessary to build healthy vibrant communities? Whose needs does urban planning really serve? And, to what extent and where has planning been used as an ideological instrument by the dominant classes? Within these unanswered questions I began to imagine the questions that may lead to alternative paradigms in planning. How can decision making be lateral rather than vertical? Where does liberation come into play? And most of all, how do we as architects and planners navigate a process where our work, our pedagogy, and our ethics directly effect the lives of oppressed citizens of the working class, a population which is not included in our beloved ‘formal city’? Read More…