Master plans and political participation: public planning policies to establish a link between entrepreneurship and city ordinances

Abstrct

Using the review of interdisciplinary thematic literature on the subject and a comparative study of three medium-sized cities in the interior of São Paulo State, Piracicaba, Bauru and Rio Claro as its theoretical and methodological framework, this paper analyzes the effectiveness of Participatory Master Plans within a paradoxical context. You have, on the one hand, the legal requirement to design plans based on the social function of property and using participatory processes and, on the other, you have strong pressure for municipalities to attract investment and reproduce the urban entrepreneurship model in their public policies. In a scenario where the country is undergoing a democratization process and where you have a new institutional arrangement for urban planning, as in, for example, the chapter on Urban Policy in the Constitution of 1988 and Federal Law N^o 10.257/2001 (City Ordinances), a contemporary empirical examination clearly shows the limited efficiency of Master Plans. It is also clear that the variation of participatory experimentation in their effective capacity to democratize decisions is low, highlighting the fact that the conduct of current governments is decisive with regard to such participation.

Keywords:
public planning policies; political participation; master plans; entrepreneurship; city ordinances.