A Manifesto for the Just City

A Manifesto for the Just City
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TAINÁ DE PAULA
BRAZILIAN URBANIST AND ACTIVIST, CITY COUNCILLOR FOR RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
SUMMARY BY ROBERTO ROCCO
For Tainá, this is a very
auspicious moment to talk
about problems of urban
development. This has
been a very productive
year in terms of the organisation
of an agenda containing issues
of social justice, the Right to the
City and the right to housing.
The electoral year in Brazil has
allowed people to build direct
proposals for a new urban
agenda. The pandemic has
opened a window to discuss
the future of our cities.
Together with Brazilian
scholar and activist Erminia
Maricato, Tainá organises
a series of debates on the
new urban agenda for Brazil,
which is titled BR Cidades.
This platform is accessible via
the link: https://www.brcidades.
org
In this national platform,
they discuss the institutional
dimension of urban development
while making concrete proposals
for change. The big challenge
they have as urban activists is to
organise a propositional agenda
to face the ultra-neoliberal
agenda being implemented in
Brazilian cities. This ultra-neoliberal
agenda is eroding the
democratic sphere. Despite
being a woman and a left-wing
politician, Tainá does not see
herself as representing only
left-wing ideas but wishes to
engage with a broad spectrum
of social movements towards
the construction of a democratic
agenda for the city. She sees the
need for dialogue and consensus
between different political groups
as essential. In this sense, she
highlights two points:
1. We must critically understand
what we have built in terms of a
democratic urban agenda in the
20th century.
2. In light of the COVID-19
pandemic, we must conceive a
new urban agenda to face our
[new] urban problems.
Contrary to many of her urban
activist peers, Tainá sees the need
to make a critical inventory of
the achievements of last century
and the first two decades of this
century, in a process she calls “the
tidying of the house,” that is, to
organise and critically understand
what are the non-negotiable
accomplishments we have
reached in terms of the struggle
for urban rights.
Tainá focuses the discussion on
the critical understanding of the
“hyper-urbanisation” process
of Brazilian cities. Brazilian
cities experienced a process of
hyper-urbanisation because
of the implementation of a
[radical] neoliberal agenda in its
cities. But Brazilian urbanists
during the 20th century are also
partly to blame, because they
have reinforced this dynamic
intellectually and conceptually.
In this sense, it is important
to reflect on why the dialogue
between the urban agenda
in Brazil and emerging global
agendas, which have introduced
new practices and parameters,
has failed. Tainá highlights the
lack of a socio-environmental
agenda with popular appeal and
support in Brazil. “We do not
have an environmental agenda
in Brazil that is supported by
a broad social base outside
of the environmentalist
movement. We have not
given enough attention to
this environmental agenda,
but the pandemic has opened
a window for us to discuss it,
because of the environmental
and sanitary causes and
consequences of the virus.”
Beyond that, Tainá, speaking from
the perspective of one of the few
black women urbanists in Brazil,
notes the small contribution of
architects and urbanists towards
the construction of processes
of racial and social inclusion.
“Our social relationships and
our production systems were
built upon the relationships
established by slavery, patronage
and subalternalisation of the
majority of our working class,
which was originally black and
which in the 20th century became
[not only] black but also mixedrace,
relegated to favelas and
Brazilian urban peripheries. In this
sense, it is our task into imagine
how those characteristics,
which are proper not only to the
Brazilian economy but to Latin
American economies in general,
can give up the ultra-casualisation
of work that characterises it. We
must understand that slums and