Urban Brazil: Visions, Afflictions, and Governance Lessons By Iva ...

The governance strategy that evolved in Curitiba, following implementation of the city master plan (Plano Diretor) in 1965, was founded on a common agreement that the city needed a consistent and comprehensive but flexible blueprint for its future. One of the plan’s distinctive features was its large scope in focusing on both the physical and social aspects of urban development. This breadth of detail made it easier for successive governments to control city policy-making and develop more effective policies for dealing with the changing urban space. The positive results achieved in Curitiba are encouraging, compared to the outcomes produced in other Brazilian cities; they highlight the importance of governments’ internal dynamics for understanding the distinct responses to the urban challenges that emerged in the 1960s.

The pervasive presence of Curitiba’s master plan in virtu­ally all aspects of city affairs has led to a self-reinforcing urban development process. New generations of politicians and policymakers have learned to take it into account as part of the policymaking environment to such a degree that no serious electoral aspirant can afford to ignore it. This stands in contrast to other city governments in Brazil, where urban development is dealt with in a more improvised fashion and new claimants to power often ignore or derail existing plans. In the four decades covered by this book, for instance, different São Paulo governments developed several master plans, all of which essentially remained in the drawer.¹⁷ None of them adequately addressed pressing city maladies, either because the policy proposals were vague or misguided or because divergences among city hall, city agencies, and legislators prevented effective government action.