THE PEOPLE’S BOUROUGH PLAN OF ACTION: A COUNTER-PROJECT OF INSURGENT CITIZENSHIP1

Abstract

ABSTRACT Porto Alegre is divided in eight Boroughs of Planning. Each Borough has a representative in the Urban Planning City Council (UPCC). In 2018 social movements organized to conquer this. From this, some of the Boroughs’ councilors felt the need to better inform themselves on the terms and subjects discussed in the UPCC, and to ensure that their local issues would be discussed. For that manner, the People’s Borough Plan of Action (PBPA) project was created by a coalition of social movements, the architect’s association (IAB-RS) and the university to perform counter-hegemonic actions. The project is based on the insurgent planning theory, which understands urban development from the standpoint of the global south as being essentially performed by communities, activists and grassroots strategies. Thus, the project moves across both invited and invented spaces of action in a non-binary relationship, with the aim of providing the grassroots movements of insurgent citizenship with technical assistance to support their claims and desires over the city they live. Regarding the City’s Master Plan revision, the PBAP represents a counter-plan related to the creation of differential spaces. Therefore, they create a moment of realization of the right to the city.

Keywords

• The right to the city
• Insurgent citizenship
• Insurgent planning
• People’s plan, counter-projects