The trajectory of the right to the city in Recife, Brazil: From belonging towards inclusion

Abstract

In 1967, Henri Lefebvre developed the Right to the City (RTC) as ‘a cry and demand’ for ‘a transformed and renewed right to urban life’. In Brazil, the RTC was institutionalised in the City Statute in 2001. We examine the trajectory of the RTC in Recife, Brazil, through the lens of Alain Badiou’s set-theoretical ontology of inconsistency, which argues that there is a fundamental disjunction between belonging and inclusion. The articulation between belonging and inclusion produces four different arenas of power and categories of being in the city that we develop as a heuristic framework for analysing the trajectory of participation in Recife, where the struggle for the RTC resulted in a system of popular participation. This system operated under the precept that ‘everyone who lives and works here belongs here’, in opposition to urban capital’s drive to include everything and everyone in the market. However, the RTC was captured within a discourse of participation and inclusivity (what we denominate the ‘RTC for All’) becoming an element in a post-political fantasy, resulting in the decay of popular participation. Nevertheless, we argue that the emancipatory and revolutionary potentiality of the RTC, as advocated by Lefebvre, remains powerful as long as the disjuncture between people’s desire for belonging and capital’s drive for inclusion is foregrounded.

Neither dead nor alive: Participatory slum governance as a zombie program

“…The municipality's “lack of [continuous] commitment” to PREZEIS has been criticized as it “has greatly diminished the scope and credibility of PREZEIS and the ability of NGOs to overcome the influence of local political brokers” (Montambeault, 2016, 140). PREZEIS, as we see it, turned into an object of electoral politics (da Silva and de Vries, 2022).…”

“…However, the Forum provides a stage for ZEIS representatives to develop themselves politically, as well as for politicians to expand their power base within ZEIS areas. The Forum has thus become an electoral arena, where representatives opportunistically offer their services to populist politicians in ways that do not necessarily benefit ZEIS areas (da Silva and de Vries, 2022). PREZEIS turned into a stage for politicians to demonstrate their care for the urban poor.…”

“…Although it is largely due to the Forum that PREZEIS still exists, it also shifted the power balance from the grassroots‐level COMULs toward the city‐level Forum. This rendered the Forum vulnerable to political influences, so much so that it turned into an arena for electoral politics (da Silva and de Vries, 2022).…”

Historical Development of Urban Planning Theory: Review and Comparison of Theories in Urban Planning

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