10 - Planning beyond the status quo: feminism and insurgency at the Belo Horizonte City Council during the approval of the city master plan

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents a unique and recent case of insurgency in local politics in Brazil, by describing the struggle of three female activists in Brazilian politics and how their work as city councilwomen in Belo Horizonte (henceforth BH) helped the approval of the city's statutory master plan, with important results for spatial justice in the city. We add to this collective effort the story of a fourth woman, who joined the councillors’ mandate and who, later, was elected to the parliament of the state of Minas Gerais. We analyse the political process of their elections, the actions in their mandates and the struggles they faced as feminist women and council members. We also analyse the city's urban and social characteristics and how the new master plan contributes to making improvements in social and urban agendas.

The chapter builds on Faranak Miraftab's work on insurgent planning, to demonstrate that a radical approach to planning practices can be undertaken by social actors with no background in urban studies or planning (Miraftab 2009: 41). Under this theoretical framework, we consider these councillors as insurgent planners, based on their origins as activists and on how, once elected, they used their mandates to fight for social rights in the city. Prior to their election none of them had previous training or experience in spatial planning. They were elected through the social movement platform Movimentação Muitas Pela Cidade que Queremos (Movement of the Many for the City We Want, shortened to Muitas – a gendered noun in the feminine), where they came together.

We consider that the election of these social movement activists is insurgent in itself: by occupying institutional positions historically denied to female and black individuals, their presence constitutes a challenge to the status quo. The chapter aims to answer the research question: are these city councillors’ mandates a unique case of insurgent planning in Brazil? To answer the question, we evaluate the political meaning of their tenures as feminist councillors in a strongly sexist and conservative city council, and in a historical context in which reactionary forces have been increasingly dominant in the Brazilian political agenda. We posit that, when democracy is threatened by authoritarian and conservative political forces, insurgency in political formal institutions, combined with activism on the streets, can be important tools for the defence of people's rights in the making of the city.