Urban Mobility, Participatory and Insurgent Planning

Abstract

The article seeks to analyze spaces of counter-hegemonic struggle and actions in the field of urban mobility: the Movimento Passe Livre — MPL [Movement for Free Fare of Public Transport] and the Conselho Municipal de Transporte e Trânsito de São Paulo — CMTT [Municipal Participatory Council of Transport and Transit of São Paulo]. Starting from the deductive method, the article is based on the literature on collaborative, communicative and participatory planning, which indicates that social participation is not always able to oppose hegemonic power. In many cases, participatory processes reinforced social injustice, as they promoted the legitimacy of neoliberal decisions. The cases of the CMTT and the MPL demonstrate that the State's participatory institutions (invited spaces) have limitations and insufficiencies to contain the hegemonic power and there is also a need for actions outside the institutional field (invented spaces).