Conflicts, resistance and collaborative planning actions - University and Communities

Fernanda Sánchez – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo (PPGAU), Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF).

Reading the city through urban conflicts in Rio de Janeiro allows us to identify them as an important methodological key for understanding the production of space, in one of the most unequal metropolises in Brazil and Latin America.
It is through conflicts that we can reveal ways of resistance, which create collaborative forms of action in the different communities of Rio de Janeiro.
In actions to plan for possible futures, community leaders have sought out universities and their research and extension groups to request assistance. In this relationship between university and community, urban planning processes arose in contexts of conflict. Conflict situations are defined in the dimensions: environmental (deforestation), housing (evictions), social (state violence, fragmentation of the social fabric, pressure to leave).
In the conflictual planning processes, the people involved perceive the possibility of "planning to fight" and "fighting to plan". It is possible to perceive the use of urban planning devices - the people's plan, the urbanism project, the architecture of the community center, as tools that communities and their leaders use to have more chances of success in their struggles for space, which they are also struggles for recognition.