Territorial Development – Managing for Sustainability in Brazil

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.

This paper describes and evaluates the governance of sustainable development applied to the territory within the strategic, integrated , participatory management of the Bocaina Project (the Observatory of Sustainable and Healthy Territories — OSHT), highlighting the mechanisms and tools that allowed the Agenda of Sustainable and Healthy Territories to be implemented territorially. The paper discusses and further develops governance strategies and practices implemented in the territory through the characterization, analysis, monitoring and evaluation of sustainable and healthy experiences — based on the Bocaina Project / OSHT, an actual experience currently being implemented at the Mosaico Bocaina (in the municipalities of Angra dos Reis, Paraty and Ubatuba, the latter at the state of São Paulo and the previous two at the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – in a coastal zone providing coastal area ecosystem services), where traditional communities of three ethnic groups (Indigenous, Quilom-bola and Caiçara) live. The Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Territorialized Strategies for Sustainable Development showed that the implementation of the Project brought about more integration and the adoption of values (equity, sustainability and autonomy) and parameters (diversity, vulnerability, integrality, ecology of knowledge, territorialization, intersectorality, participation and empowerment) which, in turn, raised the standard of environmental governance and local sustainability. RESUMO Governança para a promoção de territórios sustentáveis e saudáveis: a experiência da Bocaina, Brasil Este artigo descreve e analisa o processo de governança em desenvolvimento sustentável aplicado ao território, no contexto da gestão estratégica, integrada e participativa, do Projeto Bocaina / Observatório de Territórios Sustentáveis e Saudáveis da Bocaina (OTSS), destacando os mecanismos e ferramentas para implementar territorialmente a Agenda Territórios Sus-This article contains supporting information online at http://www.aprh.pt/rgci/pdf/rgci-612_Setti_Supporting-Information.pdf Setti et al. (2016) 58 tentáveis e Saudáveis, por meio da caracterização, análise, monitoramento e avaliação desta experiência, em andamento nos municípios de Angra dos Reis e Paraty, no litoral do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, e município de Ubatuba, no litoral do Estado de São Paulo, Brasil, onde vivem comunidades tradicionais de três etnias: indígena, quilombola e caiçara. Da aplicação da Matriz de Análise de Efetividade de Estratégias Territorializadas de Desenvolvimento Sustentável constatou-se que há evi-dências de integração e apropriação das dimensões (equidade, sustentabilidade e autonomia) e dos parâmetros (diversidade, vulnerabilidade, integralidade, ecologia de saberes, territorialização, intersetorialidade, participação e empoderamento), com impacto positivo para a governança ambiental e sustentabilidade local.

Revista Brasileira de Gestão e Desenvolvimento Regional, 2015

Territory planning and management is conceived as a process of social dialogue and decision-making involving social actors, economic and government agents of a particular territorial clipping, aiming to define its future. It is a conflicting process because it has the challenge of mediating interests and different views. The possibility that such processes are supported by the design of territorial governance is reaffirmed here, including the actions planning and territorial dynamics of management in a collaborative and democratic perspective. Based on the theoretical debate about governance, territory planning and management in Brazil, the process is contextualized and prospections are made about the practice proposing the conceptual category “territorial capital” and its components as a substract.

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.

2021

A partir da abordagem processual e da economia política, observou-se a metropolização do espaço (LENCIONI, 2017) e as consequências desta. Diante dos efeitos da urbanização extensiva do território (MONTE-MOR, 2006), a pesquisa assumiu as definições do novo regionalismo (HAESBAERT, 2020) e adentrou o campo das políticas urbanas e o histórico das regiões metropolitanas brasileiras, país de dimensão continental, de economia dependente e politicamente dominado por práticas patrimonialistas (OLIVEIRA, 2003; LEITÃO, 2009; FONSECA e MONTEIRO, 2007).Nesse contexto, debruçou-se a analisar o território da RMVPLN e este se apresentou historicamente fragmentado, homogeneizado e hierarquizado (LENCIONI, 2017), sendo que ocorre na RMVPLN, assim como em outras Regiões Metropolitanas da Macrometrópole Paulista (ARAÚJO; FERNANDES; COÊLHO, 2016), os processos de governança metropolitana estão em descompasso com a política existente para essas escalas de organização do território, em especial o Estatu...

Academia Letters, 2021

This text presents as theme the fact that the strategic public management of local governments in Brazil and, more broadly, in some Latin American countries, is subordinate to the definitions of national governments. It is recognized, however, that the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution made it possible for local governments to take on autonomy in various sectors, despite also committing themselves to the responsibility for managing it, especially public finances, focused on administration responsibility. According to Barreto (2004), many local governments henceforth are taking their own initiatives to expand their participation in international relations stimulated by the opportunities arising from some elements of the globalization process and, in the case of Paraná, especially by those coming from proximity (but not only this) with Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay and, consequently, Mercosur. These are new perspectives that have strengthened the discussion on the effectiveness of decentralized international actions executed by local governments, offering contemporary views on territorial management. The causes of the strategies of international insertion of local governments do not have an ideological origin as the national state, which is based on international relations and actions (KEATING, 2000; SILVA, 2000). Local governments seek to relate to partners in the processes of regional or international integration due to demands, above all, of practical needs, which are configured in political actions by governments, elites, interest groups, among others. The problem presented here, therefore, is based on the premise that in addition to the international insertion favorable to these groups, it is important to identify whether it has become a potential agent of regional socioeconomic development, besides the existing financing

2013

Frontiers in Political Science

This study discusses the evolvement of metropolitan governance in Brazil and uses greater São Paulo as an in-depth case study to demonstrate how metropolitan governance is organized in a megacity region in the Global South. This is of interest as many publications in this specific academic field focus on European or North American city regions that are, on average, smaller in size and part of multi-level governance systems. Hence, many theoretical positions that are established in the scholarly debate do not work well in the context of megacities. The study will describe how the metropolitan governance arrangement in greater São Paulo evolved and reflected on the setbacks and success of metropolitan planning and policies in the context of uncertain state support. Metropolitan regions have been established in Brazil by the military regime in the mid-1970s for industrialization and comprehensive top-down planning. After the fall of the regime in the 1980s, the question of metropolitan...

The article discusses innovative mechanisms of democratic participation arising from Brazilian public policy that articulate relations between government, the private sector, and civil society on questions of territorial development. It focuses on the possibilities and limitations for democratic rearrangements of public spaces and the creation of new participatory tools and languages of public action for the promotion of public policy. The discussion is based on the experience of the city of Belo Horizonte's regionalization led by the municipal government in 2011, in which, the city was divided into 40 areas called " Shared Management Territories. " The process, guidelines, and methods are described, and the different cases of dispute, conflict, and cooperation are analyzed to understand the languages of social action and the effects of territorial logic; these work in the construction of spaces and tools, enabling actors to enlarge their political participation, demand, and propose adjustments to public policy.

2014

The purpose of this article is to describe the conception of sustainable development and its associated model of urban revitalisation enshrined in the strategic development plan of the municipal government of Rio de Janeiro. Good governance, economic, social and environmental development were included in the plan as pillars of municipal development. Indicators of performance in each of these dimensions are analyzed, and an examination is made of the hypothesis that good governance is an indispensable requirement for sustainable municipal development. Based on international and local evidence, the article proposes that achieving sustainable development goals is facilitated substantially by multi-sector partnerships with mechanisms for citizen participation.

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

Revista de Economia Contemporânea

This paper explores some of the institutional factors that guide the environmental action of municipalities in Brazil. The starting premise is that there are particular institutional factors that empower the Brazilian state and society, guide processes and provide a unique profile to local environmental policy. Regulations for environmental protection are analysed from a historical perspective, taking into account the federal organization of the Brazilian state and its particular distribution of powers. Five factors emerge as the driving forces behind the actions taken by municipalities in relation to the environment: the federal status of municipalities, the inclusion of the environmental protection provision in the Federal Constitution, the lack of consistent funding for environmental policy, the coexistence of several regimes within environmental rules, and the discretionary power, held by environmental bureaucracy, related to the indeterminacy of environmental regulation.

Environmental policies involve multiple stakeholders and constituencies, yet the state is a primary institution and the main actor in policy strategies. Since the inclusion of environmental issues in the agendas of national governments and international organizations during the 1970s up to now, environmental problems proved more challenging than ever, forcing the review of policy strategies adopted by nations to address them. Tackling environmental issues requires state strategies at national level -and also at regional and local realms. Nevertheless, the role of sub-national governments in environmental policy is scarcely analyzed, especially at local level. In Brazil, little is known of what has been accomplished by local governments in terms of environmental institutions, although municipalities play an important role in the national institutional matrix, with equal responsibilities compared to the states and the federal central government. The focal point of this study is the in...

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.