Jeroen Klink

Metropolitan fragmentation and neo-localism in the periphery: revisiting the case of Curitiba.

In this paper, the Curitiba-centred narrative on the success of its urban planning experience will be qualified in light of the complexities of its metropolitan development trajectory. It will be claimed that the institutional vacuum that surrounds Brazilian metropolitan areas in general, and Greater Curitiba in particular, has been intensified by the emergence of a competitive and decentralised state spatial regime, which has consolidated a fragmented and neo-localist system of governance. Preliminary empirical evidence will be provided on the challenges that are being faced within the new regime in articulating socio-spatial, economic and environmental strategies in the direction of a more sustainable metropolitan future.

On urban reform, rights and planning challenges in the Brazilian metropolis

This article provides a theoretical interpretation on the limits and potentials of the internationally highly acclaimed Brazilian urban reform as implemented since the 1990s. We argue that representations grounded in collaborative planning and neo-institutional property theory are of little help in providing insights to the somewhat disappointing progress of ‘really existing’ Brazilian urban reform. We provide a different theoretical framework based on adapted regulation theory and critical Brazilian urban scholarship. While it underlines that better plans, planning processes and redistributive land-market instruments frequently fail to produce better cities in light of a contradictory developmental state mode of production itself, it also recognizes potential progressive praxis of social movements and local governance.

The Future is Coming. Economic Restructuring in the São Paulo Fringe: the Case of Diadema

Abstract This paper gives an analysis of a case of economic development and poses the questions of what local government could do to facilitate it. More specifically, through the analysis of the city of Diadema, located on the fringe of the Sao Paulo metropolitan region, Brazil, an attempt to shed light on the factors that determine the success of such a strategy is made. It is argued that, although local responses like the ones being developed in the fringe of the Sao Paulo metropolitan region are at least promising, they are by no means a substitute for an enabling macroeconomic environment. The article is structured along the following lines. First, a short introduction on the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo and its ongoing process of economic restructuring is given. This is followed by a short overview of the reasons that led to the decision of the municipal administration in Diadema to start with the elaboration of a local economic development agenda. Subsequently, a brief analysis of some of the data of the economic census in Diadema is presented, followed by a discussion of the Diadema City Forum and the recommendations it managed to work out for the local economic development agenda. On the basis of the process in Diadema, some conclusions are drawn on the factors that determine its relative success.

Development as we know it? Change and continuity in the production of urban and regional space in Brazil

The real estate and finance induced crisis that so dramatically affected the US and European economies in 2008 also signalled changes in the emerging economic powers. The latter had not only done reasonably well in the midst of another round of crisis driven by restructuring of the post-Bretton Wood monetary (dis)order, but were also looking for a more prominent role in the international political scenario, as reflected in forums such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa), and a more proactive stance in policy platforms such as the G20, composed of the 19 largest economies in the world and the European Union. Brazil is a paradigmatic example. Eight years of charismatic leadership under former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva have seen a remarkable activism in both national and international policy arenas. This has reflected, among others, in a renewed interest in the relationships with the Global South, an aggressive strategy to attract international events such as the World Cup 2014 and the Olympics 2016 in Rio, and a superior macroeconomic growth performance in comparison with the 1990s. This positive projected scenario has served to put the country back on the radar of national and international analysts alike. Brazil was also quick to react to the 2008 crisis through successive “packages” of anti-cyclical expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, backed up by specific measures in sectors such as consumer durables (particularly car manufacturing) and construction, and by an active role of its development banks that injected a large volume of subsidized credit into the economy. The renewed growth potential has raised a debate on the underlying drivers behind the recent Brazilian development trajectory. Is the country going through a more fundamental shift in its development regime (in the regulationist sense, meaning structural transformations in the economy and state regulatory approaches)? At first sight, the upscaling of state provided finance combined with rolled-out regulatory approaches in key areas such as industrial and technological policy, urban infrastructure, logistics, energy and housing might suggest that there is evidence for such a shift. Likewise, targeted federal poverty alleviation initiatives, such as the cash transfer programme Bolsa Familia, have lifted a significant number of families out of absolute poverty and generated positive effects on the economic base of cities and metropolitan areas. At a more fundamental level, however, this triggered another discussion regarding the significance of a Brazilian “rolled out national developmental regime 2.0”. More specifically, what would be the potential of such a regime shift in terms of generating effective transformation in the production of urban and regional space in Brazil, which has historically been moulded by a contradictory and unsustainable pattern of urbanisation? The more critical international debates, which emerged in the context of Atlantic Fordism, have problematized the nature of roll-out state restructuring, arguing that it was to be seen within a process of continuous and contradictory transformation of state spaces and strategies/projects, but nevertheless embedded within a broader trajectory of neo-liberalisation (Jessop 2000; Brenner & Theodore 2002).

Financeirização: conceitos, experiências e a relevância para o campo do planejamento urbano brasileiro

Este artigo apresenta uma sistematizacao da literatura internacional e nacional acerca do fenomeno da financeirizacao e analisa a relevância do debate para o campo de planejamento urbano-metropolitano, priorizando as questoes brasileiras. Parte do reconhecimento de que a literatura internacional sobre financeirizacao avancou significativamente, e alguns autores ja apontam para um possivel esgotamento do conceito. No entanto, argumenta que ha grande potencial de exploracao conceitual,metodologica e empirica sobre processos de financeirizacao em andamento no Brasil, assim como dos seus limites politicos. Discute os vetores da financeirizacao urbana no Brasil que se da no entrelacamento de grandes projetos urbanos, nos mecanismos de financiamento e credito publicos e na propria transformacao da atuacao territorial do Estado e de seus instrumentos de planejamento. Na conclusao, explora elementos para uma agenda de pesquisa sobre financeirizacao com relevância para o campo de planejamento urbano no Brasil.

Neither spatial Keynesianism, nor competitive neolocalism: rescaling and restructuring the developmental state and the production of space in Brazil

This article is focused on the trajectory of productive and state spatial restructuring in Brazil since the technocratic-centralist developmental state of the mid-1960s. As compared to the restructuring of Atlantic Fordism, commonly described in terms of a shift of spatial Keynesianism toward a rescaled and competitive state spatial regime, it is claimed that the Brazilian experience has important specificities. Despite the changes in its developmental regime which have occurred over time, there are important continuities in the production of Brazilian urban and regional spaces. The technocratic-centralist national developmental regime has always privileged some spaces as opposed to others, while neglecting the dimensions of social-spatial and environmental sustainabilities. Moreover, the recent rolling out of the developmental state, after a destructive round of neoliberalization of state spaces in the 1990s, can be interpreted as a crisis-driven response, which has not structurally altered the production of urban and regional spaces.

El plan director participativo y la producción social del espacio. El caso de Santo André (São Paulo)

A aprovacao do Estatuto da Cidade (EC) criou a expectativa de mudanca nos rumos da politica e da gestao urbana na direcao da construcao de cidades mais justas e ambientalmente menos predatorias. O EC institui instrumentos urbanisticos para fazer cumprir a funcao social da propriedade urbana e para institucionalizar a participacao da sociedade. Apos uma decada de experiencia debate-se o impacto transformador desta norma. Tomando como referencia a revisao da literatura, e o caso da cidade de Santo Andre (Regiao Metropolitanas de Sao Paulo), vamos argumentar que o planejamento participativo-colaborativo nao conseguiu mudar a trajetoria de desenvolvimento desigual da cidade. Entretanto, o processo podera diversificar e ampliar as arenas de disputa e se constituir em espacos alternativos de representacao em prol da producao de cidades mais justas.

Development, geography, and the metropolis – a normative appreciation of an emerging agenda

The academic literature, so it seems, has rediscovered the economic role of city regions and metropolitan areas in the process of national development. While Jacobs (1970) had already claimed that economic theory, be it within the Marxist, Keynesian, or neoclassical tradition, had created the equivalent of a ‘fools paradise’ of a spaceless economy, it was not until Krugman (1996) launched his critique on the neoclassical narrative of perfectly competitive markets that territory was being brought back into mainstream economics, leading to renewed research on the significance of cities for national development. At the same time, authors related to regulation theory, such as Benko (1996), and industrial urbanism (Storper 1997; Scott 1998) argued that post-Fordist regimes of flexible accumulation favored a more active economic role for cities and metropolitan areas, especially when compared with the traditional fiscal and monetary policies that were conducted at the national level under the Keynesian–Fordist regime. Business economists such Porter (1990) analyzed the implications of clustering for national competitiveness, while Ohmae (1996) even went so far as to claim that nation states had become the equivalents of dinosaurs, focused on the (inefficient) redistributions of wealth within national