Mapping the city of Rio de Janeiro along with youngsters and children

Abstract

This article presents the development of the methodology and procedures implemented to date in the project “Dialogues between the school and the city: mapping the educational territories of Rio de Janeiro city.” The text is based on a activity that surveyed the perceptions of students from 734 school units in the Municipal Education System and the subsequent processing of the information obtained. This one-day event was coordinated by the Planning Office of the Subdivision of Planning and Monitoring of the Executive Office and the Municipal Department of Education, in partnership with the research groups GAE (Environment and Education Group) and SEL-RJ (Open Space Systems in Rio de Janeiro) from the Graduate Program in Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The project’s objective is to collectively produce an affective mapping of the city of Rio de Janeiro, composed of drawings, texts and images produced by children about their journey between home and school. The aim is to integrate the impressions of these young people with the process of formulating the Sustainable Development Plan for Rio de Janeiro City – 2030. To achieve this aim, a conceptual approach was adopted that contains methodologies for applying, analyzing, and synthesizing results, based on research developed by the aforementioned institutions. This article highlights the methods, problems and possibilities observed during this first phase of work, in terms of analyzing the responses in the context of the 4th Regional Education Coordination Office (CRE). The intention is to contribute to the debate on the directions to be taken in participatory processes, exploring methods applicable to other research and urban contexts, and to help strengthen integrated university research, teaching and extension activities, focusing on the production of knowledge about interventions in urban planning and design.