City Unsilenced

Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy

Jeffrey Hou, Sabine Knierbein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317297420
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

What do the recent urban resistance tactics around the world have in common? What are the roles of public space in these movements? What are the implications of urban resistance for the remaking of public space in the "age of shrinking democracy"? To what extent do these resistances move from anti- to alter-politics?

City Unsilenced brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars and scholar-activists to examine the spaces, conditions, and processes in which neoliberal practices have profoundly impacted the everyday social, economic, and political life of citizens and communities around the globe. They explore the commonalities and specificities of urban resistance movements that respond to those impacts. They focus on how such movements make use of and transform the meanings and capacity of public space. They investigate their ramifications in the continued practices of renewing democracies. A broad collection of cases is presented and analyzed, including Movimento Passe Livre (Brazil), Google Bus Blockades San Francisco (USA), the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) (Spain), the Piqueteros Movement (Argentina), Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong), post-Occupy Gezi Park (Turkey), Sunflower Movement (Taiwan), Occupy Oakland (USA), Syntagma Square (Greece), Researchers for Fair Policing (New York), Urban Movement Congress (Poland), urban activism (Berlin), 1DMX (Mexico), Miyashita Park Tokyo (Japan), 15M Movement (Spain), and Train of Hope and protests against Academic Ball in Vienna (Austria).

By better understanding the processes and implications of the recent urban resistances, City Unsilenced contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the role and significance of public space in the practice of lived democracy.

Part 1
Mobilizing

Taking to the Streets!

2
Between Street and Home

Mobility, Housing, and the 2013 Demonstrations in Brazil

Luciana da Silva Andrade and João Paulo Huguenin

The year 2013 upended stereotypes of Brazilian culture as a politically apathetic population. Initially triggered by an increase in bus fares, public political activity subsequently swelled, compounded by widespread dissatisfaction with significant public investment in large public events, and demonstrations began happening across Brazil. Public dissatisfaction reached a new height with local frustration with bus fares and was amplified by a glut of massive public spending in major events, including the Soccer World Cup in 2014,¹ the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro (here on simply referred to as “Rio”), the 2013 Confederations Cup in Brazil, and World Youth Day in Rio. The demonstrations of June 2013 were unique in that they were influenced and enabled by our more interconnected world through new means of communication, allowing for perspectives beyond those of corporatized media. They mirrored many other protests including Occupy Wall Street in New York City, the Indignados Movement in Spain, and other counterparts in Greece, Turkey, and Egypt, among others.

In this chapter, we intend to analyze what and how urban conditions contributed to recent insurgencies in Brazilian cities, especially the most densely populated ones. Our main focus is how access to housing is linked to issues of mobility and transportation. We will focus on Rio both because it is the core of the second largest metropolitan region in Brazil and because of the unique aspects of its protests. While most demonstrations in Brazil were limited to the month of June 2013, the ones in Rio lasted until the end of the year and contributed to the state governor leaving office before the end of his term.

The 2013 demonstrations suggest that social movements in Brazil are undergoing a profound transformation. We believe such dramatic transformation has been catalyzed by the opportunity to connect with others through collaborative structures of social organization that are not rooted in competition. The collaboration generated new ways to counter the hegemonic power of the existing systems. We are curious what parallels may exist between other historical moments of drastic advancements in technology (e.g. the printing press, industrialization) and what implications these advancements may have for the articulation and contestation of the bourgeois public sphere (Habermas 1984).

Consequently, we ask if the 2013 protests in Brazil occurred in a context of profound transformation that points to significant sociocultural challenges to the dominance of capitalist-driven urban organization. Given that some social groups may have more power and resources than others, this perspective investigates how contemporary media and communication allow horizontal forms of social organization to challenge existing vertical hierarchies of power, and suggests other social orders such as Hardt and Negri’s (2011) collaboration-driven alter-modernity where socially produced wealth is collectively appropriated and where structuration is not only based on radical redistribution, but is committed to preserving sociocultural memory and natural resources for future generations.

The Year 2013

With no effective mass rapid transportation system in Brazil, public transportation in Brazil is delivered primarily by bus with poor or nonexistent connections to other modes of transportation. “Bilhetes únicos,” an integrated ticket system allowing for the integration of different lines or modes of transport, was introduced and popularized only recently in the last decade. This system allowed for continuous transportation over two hours in Rio and three hours in São Paulo. The integrated ticket system was an essential contribution to a system that already does not charge public elementary and high school students or senior citizens for public transportation. However, populations in peripheral neighborhoods are often subject to long intervals between buses, resulting in overcrowding, which is exacerbated by trip times that can last for hours. Even when there are additional forms of transportation, this does not change the situation, since these modes of transportation have either not been renovated for a long time, or have not been expanded as necessary. The largest subway system in Brazil, in São Paulo, continues to be unable to meet demand in spite of the support of the existing public bus system.

The unmet need for efficiency has contributed to the entire public transit system being heavily stigmatized. Many of the region’s wealthy and social elite perceive the system as beneath them and refuse to use it, relying on expensive private helicopters to move about the city. The majority of Brazil’s middle and working class reside in Rio’s southern zones and some parts of northern zones of the city. The combination of social disparities and underfunded, disconnected public transit has heavily encouraged the use of automobiles. Automobile use experienced tremendous growth when tax exemptions and long-term automobile loans were issued in the 2000s. Streets and highways were also not adequately expanded to meet user needs, and transit corridors were quickly overtaken by vehicles, leading to unprecedented traffic jams.

Brazil’s eagerness to fund massive global event infrastructure and simultaneous failure to manage and invest in comprehensive public transportation propelled thousands of protestors to gather in nearly every Brazilian state center in 2013. Given the critical public discontent against a 20-cent increase in ticket prices² first in São Paulo and then in other capitals,³ revolts predictably ensued because of the significant impact on the lives of the poorer population. This indignation of the masses found a voice in the actions proposed by the Movimento Passe Livre (MPL [Free Fare Movement]). The MPL was founded in 2005 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre through the organization of different independent collectives who protested against the prior 2005 ticket price increases in many Brazilian cities. The MPL understands the importance of mobility to urban life and their goal was to implement free transportation.

By 2013, the movement had matured and recognized collective transportation as an issue that was linked with different urban problems and should be considered a fundamental right of all citizens. This movement then started to consider the importance of using the city as a means to win over the city itself. Rejecting the institutions established by the Charter of Cities,⁴ such as City Councils,⁵ the MPL decided to take to the streets for direct action as the main way for people to collectively take control over their own lives.

We must highlight that, due to its own nature, the MPL never acted as the “owner” of the demonstrations. MPL’s decentralized organization is understood as the precedent for another form of association: horizontal association schemas where people relate in a more autonomous and collaborative way as opposed to the hierarchical structure commonly seen in labor unions or governments. They work in a decentralized way because they have flexibility built in to their organization, where each member may act autonomously so long as they are in accordance with the principles of the collective. The main achievement of MPL’s June 2013 protests was the cancellation in ticket price hike for more than 100 cities in Brazil that year (MPL 2013).

Maricato (2013) suggested that whoever followed the urban dynamics in Brazil would not be surprised by the feeling of indignation that resulted in street resistance in June 2013. The initially isolated movement against increasing bus fares quickly gained popular momentum and led to a broader debate on how movements for housing and urban reform are related to these dynamics. In fact, several other urban social movements had already been self-organizing in various ways,⁶ particularly in promoting demonstrations that were increasingly attracting media attention. This was true for the housing movements that came into being at the time of re-democratization and after the Federal Constitution was promulgated in 1988 by a new social movement, the Forum Nacional de Reforma Urbana (FNRU [National Forum for Urban Reform]). It exists to this date, with the purpose of fighting for an urban redistributive reform in Brazil and for the enforcement of rights assured by the nation’s Magna Carta and by the specific articles pertaining to cities—the Charter of Cities, 2001.

Indeed, some of the most important urban rights achievements are the inclusion in the Federal Constitution of articles 182 and 183, addressing urban policy, and the publication of the Charter of Cities, 13 years later, which established the legal framework that enabled actions aimed at the democratization of the city. This helped create, with the PT (Workers’ Party [Partido dos Trabalhadores]) in the presidency of the Republic:

• in 2003, the Ministry of Cities, and also the City Councils and the local, state, and federal Conference of Cities,
• in 2004, the National Housing Policy,
• in 2005, the first bill of law; as one of the consequences of this policy the first bill of law was created, triggered by public initiative, setting up the National System for Social Housing (SNHIS) and the National Fund for Social Housing (FNHIS), and
• in 2009, the Plano Nacional de Habitação (PLANHAB [National Housing Plan]), which guided the conduct of state and municipal plans.

However, these achievements were hindered by the interests of real estate capital markets. In addition, the ultimate failure of the National Housing Plan, a program that the housing movements had argued for in response to grassroots claims, undermined credibility for movements for a more egalitarian city. If the agenda of the National Movement for Urban Reform is systematically implemented, it may include several agendas derived from public sentiment to improve the lives of its citizens. Consequently, a few groups opted to continue to oppose urban gentrification through the occupation of abandoned buildings, participation in councils, and the organization of political events.

These movements did not play a leading role in the 2013 protests, although they did help pave the way for the demonstrations. However, many of the members found themselves in a curious position: protesting against the government that had provided the most significant social advances in the context of re-democratization.

Beyond 20 Cents

The increase in bus ticket prices happened while Brazilian cities were going through a major urban mobility crisis. PT administrations chose to implement policies that did not positively contribute to public infrastructure or quality of life but instead promoted consumption of manufactured goods. Instead of focusing on actionable elements of the public realm, particularly urban connectivity, the PT attempted to cultivate an urban fabric dependent on commodities and purchasing power. These development policies sold products like cars at very low rates but failed to create sufficient infrastructure for growing car use. Travel times increased significantly in the main metropolitan regions and spending two or more hours commuting became commonplace for the large majority of the urban population, particularly for the less affluent (Rodrigues 2013).

Since 1963, large Brazilian cities have grown according to a model that is highly exclusive and socially segregated. The extraordinary urban growth during the Military Dictatorship period worsened the situation, as new housing complexes were built in distant peripheral areas with poor connectivity to each other or urban cores. Kowarick (1979) studied the effects of this situation on people’s lives and called it “urban spoliation.” Although many social movements have emerged from this early period of dissatisfaction, public momentum and communicability were not enough to bring about large-scale social mobilization. It is important to remember that the repression period of the 1960s and 1970s silenced popular dissatisfactions due to fear of persecution and often violent political repression. Given that policies set in motion in the 1970s continued unabated for decades, understanding the catalytic forces of 2013 may offer insight into the interrelationships between public policy, public sentiment, and media and communication forms.

Once the PT had obtained the presidency, they created many programs that increased the consumption capability of different social groups who had been denied access to some achievements of modernity. Initially these policies seemed to increase redistribution, but they succumbed to conservative powers and populist strategies to remain in power (Cardoso and Lago 2015). Eventually, by 2007, construction work related to road recovery and urbanization of favelas were grouped under the title Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC [Growth Acceleration Program]). And in 2008, in the context of an American and European economic crisis, the federal government launched an influential program, the Programa Minha Casa Minha Vida (PMCMV [My Home, My Life Program]). The program’s stated goal was to produce social housing units, as well as maintain economic growth through the civil construction industry and create jobs for the less-qualified workforce. The PMCMV was the first program in Brazilian history to promote subsidized housing for low- and very-low-income populations, but in an unfortunate twist it ended up significantly increasing the value of urbanized land and displacing citizens. Demand from international investors in real estate also began to accrue. The combination of local value increase and international attention led to the displacement of a significant number of people to less valued neighborhoods, leading to the acceleration of gentrification and social segregation (Cardoso and Lago 2015). The government’s interventions that coul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of Figures
• Notes on Editors and Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 Mobilizing: Taking to the Streets!
• PART 2 Reclaiming: From Public Space to the Political
• PART 3 Negotiating: Urban Resistance and Emerging (Counter) Publics
• PART 4 Contesting: Against Backlashes, Criminalization, Co-optation, and Anti-Pluralism
• Conclusions
• Index