| Chapter 1: | Studying Urban Governance |
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The message I hope to convey in this work is that despite the atmosphere of pessimism in Brazil, born from years of experience with unresponsive governments, there are opportunities for making urban life much better—if governments are committed to doing so. Yet frustration may grow if those concerned with the quality of urban life limit themselves to the mere replication of public policies that are working in a different setting. Urban areas within the same country present enormous variation in demands and available resources. Therefore, those who hope to improve urban life should go beyond the simple emulation of policies and instead work to build a policy environment that encourages more productive public actions.
What follows is not, by any means, a cultural narrative of cities or a description of a model city. It is neither a comparison of bad and good urban spaces nor a tale of utopian views of futurist metropolises. Moreover, although the research discusses urban planning, I do not deal with technical aspects of the subject but focus instead on the politics of planning. The main themes of this book are governance strategies and their impact on the quality of government action at the municipal level. The chapters that follow provide a critical examination of the public policy environment during more than three decades of decision-making in the city of Curitiba and contrast its governance strategy with that of São Paulo’s. The examination of two urban programs—mass transportation and environmental management (and a subset of initiatives derived from them)—provides the content on which the policy frameworks are assessed. The analysis reveals how local politics shapes and is shaped by either a coherent or a confusing policy environment in urban spaces marked by inequalities. Throughout the work as a whole, the perennial question—how do we best govern?—is a central theme.