Towards an insurgent urbanism: collaborative counter-hegemonic practices of inhabiting and transforming the cities

Abstract

This article proposes a debate anchored in a dialogue between concepts of insurgent planning and humane urbanism and the idea of a subaltern urbanism through the lens of a critical reflection on the role of city-building professionals. The paper explores the idea of an insurgent urbanism as a collaborative praxis of city design and development that arises from the protagonism of marginalised communities and the accumulative knowledge of social movements, activists and scholars. It focuses on three different learning dimensions based on the experience of teaching/research actions developed at a self-organised squat in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between 2018 and 2022. Dialoguing with ideas of social learning, it shows that these practices have created a relevant exchange of different types of knowledge and have contributed to the development of other solutions that challenge the hegemonic and neoliberal city production and can therefore be seen as alternatives for the development of more egalitarian and imaginative futures that expand beyond the context of squats in Brazil.

Keywords:

• insurgent urbanism
• collaborative practices
• social learning
• insurgent planning
• subaltern urbanism

Introduction

Historically vulnerable and excluded communities have developed different alternative modes of urbanisation in the absence of state-led effective alternatives (de Maricato 2017; Martínez and Gil 2022; Royer 2009; Souza 2009). In this context, southern perspectives on urbanisation processes have focused on challenging the Eurocentric hegemonic perspectives on planning and design by legitimising practices performed by the urban poor in the development of their urban environments (Bhan 2019; Holston 1998; Hou 2020; Miraftab 2015; Roy 2011; Schindler 2017).

More than just acknowledging those practices, many scholars in the urban studies field have argued for a critical reflection of the practices of urbanism as a profession. These critiques highlight on the one hand the level of alienation in the current practice of these professionals (Ferro 1982; Harvey 2012; C. N. F. dos Lefebvre 1991; Santos 1981) and on the other hand the potential that lies in collaborative processes that involve both civil society, academics and city-building professionals (Friedmann 1987; Harvey 2012; Miraftab 2015; Roy 2011)

From this perspective, this paper aims at debating the role of architects and urbanists in the context of self-organised and self-built spaces in collaborative experiences based on knowledge transfer involving social movements, vulnerable communities and researchers from the urban studies field to produce transformation in the practices of city inhabiting. It aims to illustrate through the experience of a self-organised occupation in Brazil that by bringing the action to the centre of the planning and design practices we can produce social learning (Friedmann 1987) and mutual transformation processes.

Focusing on self-organised and self-built spaces can provide us innovative and alternative experiences, since the marginalised character of these contexts has created the basis for the development of emancipatory visions of future that intentionally challenge the status quo of neoliberal capitalist urban space production (Friedmann 1987; Harvey 2000; Holston 1998; Lefebvre 1968; Miraftab 2015; Roy 2011).

Social mobilization is an ideology of the dispossessed, whose strength derives from social solidarity, from the seriousness of their political analysis, and from their unflinching determination to change the status quo. (Friedmann 1987, 83)

Yet the focus on self-organised and self-built spaces should not be understood as a limitation of the reflection to these contexts, but rather as a potential for learning processes that can expand beyond the context of vulnerable communities and give us insights on different approaches and actions in the urban studies field. These ‘views from the periphery’ (Yiftachel 2020, 152) and ‘southern urban practices’ (Bhan 2019) offer alternative forms of understanding the ‘pluriversal nature of the urbanization process’ (Yiftachel 2020, 152) in a global network that overcomes the definitions and divisions of the Global South and Global North (Krätke 2014).

Anchored in the dialogue between insurgent planning and humane urbanism (Miraftab 2015, 2016) and subaltern urbanism (Roy 2011), as well as in the approximation of radical planning (Miraftab 2015) and social learning (Friedmann 1987), we propose three key learning aspects of the collaborative action between city-building professionals and community that could lead to potential forms of insurgent urbanism.

Going beyond the recognition of these practices in the concept of planning, we intend to show that the collective and collaborative work developed in these spaces with different actors and institutions can contribute to the imagination and development of other forms of living in society. We propose that concrete and collective development of action-based interactions between academics, civil society and societal organisations such as social movements can be an important tool to rethink the role and the training of architects and urbanists.

These reflections are based on a long-term collaborative process between scholars, activists, social movements and residents from a self-organised occupation called Solano Trindade in Brazil. The authors were active participants in different moments of this collaboration and are part of a large network that have been since 2014 developing teaching/research and outreach projects with the residents of the occupation in order to develop alternative solutions for housing and the neighbourhood. This is part of a set of research methods that defend the immersion of the researchers as active actors in the field. These sets of methods were described and used by authors such as Carlos Nelson Ferreira dos Santos (1981) and Thiollent (2011) and were the basis of the research field for this paper.

The paper intends to discuss those practices as learning processes through the lens of insurgent urbanism. In order to do so we discuss next how counter-hegemonic forms of urbanisation performed by marginalised communities can be understood as insurgent practices that challenge hegemonic modes of urban production. In the following section we focus on the discussion of the role of urbanists and planners in those insurgent practices by critically approaching professional knowledge in collaborative practices of urban space production. After setting the basis of an insurgent urbanism, understood as a transformational learning experience, we propose to analyse through one case study three different learning dimensions: experimentation of different knowledges and technologies, approximation of design and build and development of mutual learning environments.

Alternative forms of urbanisation: insurgent practices in city development against hegemonic neoliberal planning

The increasing financialization of all aspects of life including housing and public space lays the foundations for segregation, exclusion and inequality in cities worldwide (Harvey 2007; Harvey 2012; Marcuse 2020; Maricato 2017; Rolnik 2013). In countries in the so-called Global South the combination of a neoliberal state and state-capitalism has produced ‘structurally violent schemes of urban development’ (Burte and Kamath 2023, 454) that intend to discipline or contain mostly poor populations of society and at the same time favour capital accumulation by elite and private actors. These ‘more-than-neoliberal’ ways of urban governance generate on the one hand violent processes of exclusion in urban space, yet on the other hand create the basis for counter-hegemonic processes of resistance (Burte and Kamath 2023).

All of us somehow ‘produce’ space, Lefebvre (1991) says in The Production of Space, yet all of us don’t produce space in the same way, or on the same terms, especially on the terms of those who have wealth and power. (Merrifield 2015, 758)

Aiming to challenge this mode of city production different organisations and social movements have been mobilising to produce alternative resistance processes that have broadened their struggle from a reactive to a proactive one. The practice of other forms of inhabiting the city, as we can see for instance in squats and favelas in Latin American cities, can be seen as tactics (Certeau 1984) to subvert this logic. These insurgent actions challenge the ideas of meritocracy and economic growth of neoliberalism by showing that other and more collective forms of inhabiting and relating to each other and to urban space are possible (Roy 2011). In this context, poor communities go beyond being victims of the exclusive hegemonic planning models and act not only to imagine and conceive but actually to implement solutions for their demands, by ‘constructively criticising the state and putting it permanently under pressure’ (de Souza 2006, 328).

Scholars have also been looking at these phenomena and advocating for alternative forms of urbanism and urbanisation. Focusing on grassroot movements and bottom-up experiences, they propose urban planning and design approaches that prioritise the production of equal and fair spaces through participatory decision-making processes. Concepts such as tactical urbanism that focus on small-scale spatial transformation to empower communities and transform public spaces (Lydon and Garcia 2015), collaborative design and planning that understand city-making practices as a collective endeavour involving many actors (Kitao 2005) and the proposal of post- and decolonial perspectives to planning and design (Mignolo 2008; Name 2016; Yiftachel 2009) have in common a critical reflection of the hegemonic and oppressive practices performed by city-building professionals and taught in the architecture and urbanism schools.

From the different perspectives on alternative forms of urbanism, we would like to address first the idea of radical planning with more attention. Radical planning proposes a linkage between knowledge and action (Friedmann 1987) and it has become the basis for the discussions of insurgent planning proposed by Miraftab (2015). The author argues that the actions performed by the poor excluded defy neoliberal logic by exercising and creating other spaces and forms of active engagement and participation in space transformation and urban struggles. ‘As the urban poor defy policies imposed on them from above, they shape their environment through resistance and insurgency.’ (Miraftab 2015, 201)

Radical and insurgent planning discourse understands that everyday forms of resistance performed by marginalised communities produce other forms of spatialities and social-spatial dynamics that have the potential to contest and confront hegemonic power relations. In this context constant negotiation and making flexible uses and practices are a mode of resistance and construction of symbolic spatial meanings (Hou 2020). These actions represent ‘the formation of consciousness in the struggle against injustice, as well as intentional, strategic actions to engage in resistance and produce structural changes’ (Hou 2020, 121).

By being excluded from formal and institutionalised processes, the urban poor developed insurgent planning practices as tactics to define and produce their spaces, at the same producing time insurgent spaces (C. N. F. dos Maina 2017; Miraftab 2015; Roy 2011; Santos 1981).

Insurgent planning as a professional practice needs to acknowledge and place in the centre of the discussions not only the urban form of these insurgent spaces, as well as the social-spatial and political dynamics that arise from it. It should aim at planning for structural change and transformation rather than reproduction of imposed systems and models of city (Friedmann 1987; Maina 2017).

For Friedmann (1987) the role of planners would be of mediators and facilitators by supporting radical practices and collectively developing solutions for issues encountered and perceived by the communities. Besides, radical planners should be the actors that promote a mediation between practice and theory, and therefore expand the issues faced in the local context to broader contexts. He highlights that the role of planners should be

to shape transformative theory to the requirements of an oppositional practice in specific local settings, to create opportunities for the critical appropriation of transformative theory by groups organized for action, and to rework this theory in ways that will reflect first-hand experience gathered in the course of radical practice itself. (Friedmann 1987, 392)

The idea of radical planners as mediators between theory and practice developed by Friedmann (1987) is based on the model of social learning as an iterative system between actions and reflections. The author redefined the concept of planning by understanding it as a link from knowledge to action. The active engagement of planners in the field then becomes a common-ground principle for radical planning (Friedmann 1987; Maina 2017).

The second idea we would like to explore is Roy’s (2011) vision on subaltern urbanism that shifts the hegemonic perception of spaces such as favelas as only a product and a place for reproduction of exclusion, inequality and precarity. The author looks at these spaces from the perspective of housing solutions, struggle and political resistance. It is an important paradigm because it intends to acknowledge and make visible the agency present in the spaces of poverty, especially in the Global South. It aims at shifting the perception of those spaces as problems to potential and vibrant spaces. Going further than the idea of favelas as solution instead of problems defended by Turner (1976), these contemporary authors incorporate the innovation and creative aspects of the marginalised spaces.

By using the term subaltern, Roy intends to question the elitism present in hegemonic discourses and proposes a shift in how cities and especially the spaces of the poor are represented and studied. She understands the subaltern as ‘an agent of change’ (Roy 2011, 227). By dialoguing with the concepts of grey spaces from Yiftachel (2009) she proposes replacing the concept of subalternity and developing slum and periphery as theories.

Miraftab (2015) and Roy (2011), although advocating for the shift in the epistemological perspective towards insurgent and subaltern spaces, highlight that paradoxically this debate can be used to attribute the responsibility on solving their issues to the hands of the poor themselves (Maina 2017; Roy 2011). These dynamics are not completely external from the imposed and existing system. Miraftab (2015) points out that even the counter-hegemonic practices can play a role in the neoliberal system and that in the past decades dominant groups and the state have been using several strategies to incorporate these actions and weaken the struggle.

Just as the sites producing power are multiple and shifting, so are the sites for counter-hegemonic movements. Analysis of squatter movements in the global south reveals how informal settlements as embodiment of citizens’ insurgency also serve to stabilize the system. By virtue of their illegality, squatter settlements that provide affordable shelter for the majority poor are the state’s opportunity for political manipulation in exchange for much needed services. Yet at the same time they breed counter-hegemonic and insurgent movements, mobilizing beyond the state’s control and claiming their right to the city. (Miraftab 2015, 7)

In the next sections we intend to explore the idea of an insurgent urbanism as a collaborative praxis of city design and planning that arises from the protagonism of marginalised communities and the cumulative knowledge of social movements, civil society and scholars.

Towards an insurgent urbanism: critical reflection on the role of city-building professionals

The concept of insurgent urbanism has frequently been associated with organised social movements or collectives that promote spatial transformations through contested practices (Maina 2017; Maziviero 2017; Hou 2020; Miraftab 2016). It questions the legitimacy of expert and professional knowledge and proposes a transformation both of the role as well as of the methods of architects, urbanists and planners (Friedmann 1987; Maina 2017; Merrifield 2015).

Merrifield (2015) for example advocates for the amateur urbanist in opposition to the ‘professional’ extremely tied to academic beliefs and in the vicious cycles of scientific knowledge production. He advocates for a critical reflection of the role of these professionals and dialoguing with Illich’s (1973) call for a ‘post-professional era’ where professionals and their knowledge are challenged by the people. This deconstruction of the artificial division between official knowledge and everyday practices or other forms of knowledge could provide alternative forms of collective and common living based less in made-up realities governed by economic and political power and more in human aspects of conviviality (Illich 1973; Merrifield 2015; Martínez Canedo and Andrade 2021; López et al. 2019; Pruijt 2013; Zhang 2021).

Instead of advocating for the end of professions and the replacement of academic and ‘expert’ knowledge with a popular one, we aim to critically reflect on the role of architects and urbanists by proposing a transformation in the methods and formats hegemonically used for city planning and design. This debate is anchored in the experience of a long-term collaboration process involving academics, professionals, social movements and dwellers at a self-organised occupation in Brazil.

We argue that such experiences could represent paths to an insurgent urbanism as a collective action of intentionality and an organised form of intervention into the space in order to challenge the existing urban system and housing production. In the next sections we look for the potential insurgent urbanism from the lens of three learning dimensions: (1) the experimentations of different knowledges and technologies; (2) the approximation of design and build through a learn by doing process; and (3) the development of mutual learning environments.

These experiences involve a complex network of different actors and instances of power, constantly changing hierarchies and a non-linear and conflictual way of planning and design. It is also important to recognise the potential of the periphery to destabilise the centre (Roy 2011) through the concrete possibility of building something different in the spaces of poverty, developed by the community in collaboration with different actors.

Solano Trindade squat

This paper’s discussions are based on the experiences of a series of collaborative workshops developed from 2018–2022 at a Brazilian squat named Solano Trindade. Solano is located on a 50,000m² plot of land in Duque de Caxias, a city in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The majority of the population in this area lives in poor conditions, with an average income equivalent to 2.7 minimum wages.¹ In 2014 a group organised by the National Movement of Housing Struggle (MNLM) occupied public land to assure housing for the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. This land had been abandoned for more than 10 years (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Map Rio de Janeiro and Solano Trindade (Source: google maps and wikipedia with intervention from the authors).

This squat is part of a struggle of many social movements in Brazil that occupy empty and abandoned land in order to raise awareness of the (intentional) negligence of the government and part of the society of the right to the city and housing and the social function of property, as well as for the urban reform, that are present in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 and in the Cities Statute (Maricato 2017; Stevens 2019; Zhang 2021; Edesio Fernandes 2011). Despite this legal framework, Solano squat is still struggling for its land regularisation. The process of obtaining a real land use concession—an instrument entitled CDRU that grants the use of public land for 99 years (Fernandes 2011; Fernandes 2016)—was advanced, but the local disputes combined with the political changes that have occurred in the country since 2018 have represented a setback in this sense (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Meeting with residents, social movement and researchers to discuss technical advisory at Solano Trindade in 2016 (Source: Luciana Andrade).

From the beginning, Solano Trindade squat was intended by the social movement to be a project for the development of alternative ways of living in a community involving more than the access to housing as a basic need, including topics such as food security, education, income and employment generation, among others. In order to strengthen the project, the social movement activated its already stablished network with research groups² at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Together with the social movement and the inhabitants of Solano, these groups have been developing since 2014 different formats of collaboration that include permanent technical advisory, intensive workshops, curricular courses and outreach activities (Petrus 2021).

Among these activities, a series of workshops entitled Collaborative production of transformation knowledge in self-organised occupations (COLLOC) held annually from 2018 to 2022 and funded by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) are the basis of the proposed discussions in this paper. Both authors along with other colleagues were part of the organisation, planning and implementation of these workshops where we explored collaborative methods (Burguière et al. 2016; Wieck 2021) for design and build that aimed at constructing micro-interventions for urgent needs for the dwellers. We also envisioned building approaches (Giseke et al. 2021; Hallding 2014) that intended more than to anticipate imaginary futures, to promote dialogues and discussions in different scales and time spans with the inhabitants, social movements and other actors. During the workshops a number of different experts were present from different fields of knowledge and from different parts of the world who worked together with the inhabitants, students from Brazil and Germany and MNLM for a period of 10 days each year (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Students, Alumni and residents discussing interventions and proposals for Solano at COLLOC 2022 (Source: author).

Through the experiences of the workshops we intend to illustrate possible paths and challenges towards an insurgent urbanism, using the perspective of social learning through social practices in space from the lens of three knowledge-based reflections on planning and design: experimentation of knowledge, learning by doing approaches and mutual learning environments.

Experimentation of knowledge

The neoliberal hegemonic mode of urban production is based on an excluding and hierarchical system of forms of knowledge that creates value for certain types of knowledge—for example the academic one—while disregarding others—such as popular or traditional knowledge (Andrade and Canedo 2019; Friedmann 1987; Illich 1973). Critiques around expert knowledge and politics of knowledge have highlighted the Western and colonialist approach to urbanisation theories and advocated for the inclusion of diverse and non-hegemonic epistemologies (Adams 2015; Delgado and Ruiz 2014; Merrifield 2015; Roy 2011; Schwarz and Streule 2020).

Friedmann (1987) argues that planning is a link between knowledge and action, academic and political practice. For him, through active and collective exchange with vulnerable communities we could produce a shared understanding of complex problems understood as social learning processes. For the author,

Social learning (…) begins and ends with action, that is, with purposeful activity. It is a complex, time-dependent process that involves, in addition to the action itself (which breaks into the stream of ongoing events to change reality), political strategy and tactics (which tell us how to overcome resistance), theories of reality (which tell us what the world is like), and the values that inspire and direct the action. Taken together, these four elements constitute a form of social practice. It is the essential wisdom of the social learning tradition that practice and learning are construed as correlative processes, so that one process necessarily implies the other. (Friedmann 1987, 181)

While advocating for the incorporation of non-expert knowledge through experiences on the ground, Friedmann highlights the role of academic actors in systematising and articulating the produced knowledge into scientific discourse and a ‘loop learning’ process where the tactics performed by the actors as well as their theories and beliefs are transformed through the action experiences and the scientific reflections that arise from it.

In the social mobilization tradition, planning appears as a form of politics, conducted without the mediations of ‘science.’ Nevertheless, scientific analysis, particularly in the form of social learning, plays an important role in the transformative processes sought by social mobilization. (Friedmann 1987, 83)

The insurgent and subaltern dimensions of these other forms of knowledge lie in the idea of developing experimentations that produce ‘imaginative futures’ (Miraftab 2015) that challenge the status quo in terms of which knowledge is to be considered and most of all whose knowledge should be taken into consideration when working in these contexts.

Beyond the importance of incorporating academics into the iteration process of transformation knowledge production (Wieck 2021), in our experience with Solano Trindade the role of the Social Movement represented a shift in the hegemonic hierarchical processes, especially the ones involving knowledge, that have been dominated by the scientific actors. The cumulative knowledge of social movements, especially in several years of collective work with academic and other institutional actors in Brazil have increased their empowerment (Marcuse 2009; Stevens 2019). By working with a social movement that is organised, structured and has clear demands, rules and hierarchies, we faced constant challenges to our own knowledge and approaches. According to one of the participants in a workshop in 2023 at Solano Trindade:

I think the biggest difference is how the social movement thinks about collective spaces and how we as urban planners learn about collective spaces in academic environments. I think it is not so much about cultural differences, but about visions of society. For MNLM [collective spaces] are not spaces for consumerism. It is about collectivity and exchange in the daily life without the focus on private space (…). This is why I think we learn more from them than they from us, because it is about a shift in that paradigm. (Roth, C.—student participant in COLLOC workshop 23, authors' translation)

In the case of Solano Trindade, the long lasting and trust-built relationship between technicians, academics and inhabitants has laid the groundwork for a positive dispute over those hierarchies by placing popular and local knowledge in the centre of the discourses, without disregarding academic and technical knowledge. It is precisely through this dispute and dialogue that took place on site and over concrete actions and demands, that insurgent experimental knowledge could be produced. Talking about COLLOC workshop 2021, one of the residents and members of the social movement described the learning dimension in concrete actions:

The workshops always leave something behind. In this workshop we could for example have a workshop with bamboo, where we could foresee some possibilities [of using bamboo as a construction material] and also plant some bamboo seeds. It is a future plan, but that was already started in this workshop. (…) The importance of the workshop is that besides bringing resources, what is necessary for us in this moment, is that we are together, sharing and exchanging with people. (Gomes, E., dweller of Solano Trindade and member of MNLM Social Movement, authors' translation)

The various debates and conflicts arising from this process were very important to initiate critical reflection on the extent of the autonomy of the architects and planners in the decisions regarding design and implementation. This can be related to Harvey’s (2000) ‘rebel architect’ who performs a socially constructed function while facing the circumstances and consciousness derived from an everyday life in which demands are met on time, in which social expectations exist, in which skills are acquired that are expected to be employed in limited ways for purposes defined generally by others.

The COLLOC workshop-series are a set of intensive and immersive activities over 10 days that have happened every year from 2018 to 2022 (in 2020 the event was cancelled due to the pandemic) and is planned to continue at least until 2025. The series is organised as a cooperation between German and Brazilian universities and the participants are researchers, professors, and students from both institutions, as well as Alumni from German Universities living in DAC countries.³ The participation of the Alumni from DAC countries is a requirement by the funding programme, but it allowed us to incorporate a diversity of actors with different expertise and backgrounds that proved to be valuable for the development of the project.

Regarding the exchange of knowledge, we would like to highlight two points in this experience. First the challenges in incorporating the different formats and types of knowledge, especially in such an intense, short-term activity. While the residents from Solano and the social movement are already used to working with academics due to the long-term cooperation with UFRJ research groups, the groups of students and Alumni that are different each year are usually not. During the intensive exchange with the dwellers and social movement, they are confronted with other views on building techniques and uses of materials, ways of living together and most of all with the defined project of the city envisioned by the social movement and shared by the residents. Beyond generating conflicts, these interactions have produced interesting outcomes, as for example the experimental prototype of a rain garden developed in 2022.

The idea of this prototype arose from the urgent need of the residents to remove accumulated water from the roof of one of the squat buildings. Combining the building knowledge of the residents, the technical knowledge of one of the Alumni and the knowledge of a local researcher about native plants from the area that could act as insect repellents, the prototype was built in a 3-day collective action using existing materials and resources. This prototype was a starting point for further discussions on how to develop water-based solutions that could serve multiple purposes (see Figures 4 and 5).

Figure 4 and 5: Accumulated water on the roof. Students building the rain garden prototype in COLLOC 2022 (Source: COLLOC archive).

Figure 6: Playground built in COLLOC 2018 (Source: COLLOC archive).

The second aspect is the involvement of international actors, especially as this is a project funded by a German institution and therefore the outcomes will have to address its demands. How to promote counter-hegemonic practices and knowledge by working within the hegemonic system? This is a challenge for all involved because we often are confronted with our own hegemonic views during the process. In this regard we would like to emphasise the continuity of the project as an element that impacts its success. Although the event itself happens in a very short time frame, the annual continuation of the project and the months of preparation in close collaboration with locals are crucial to minimise the imposing character that it could assume. We also observed a transformation from the first workshop in 2018 to the last one in 2022 in terms of the position of the new participants towards the locals, but mostly from the residents towards the international group.

It is also important to highlight that the residents and the social movement acknowledge the relevance of international cooperation to strengthen their struggle. The presence of international universities on site as well as some of the produced material was used by the social movement in negotiations with state institutions, for example in their process of regularisation as well as in informal tactics for protection in the relationship with informal power actors such as the paramilitary groups that dominate the area. In this section we discussed the importance of deconstructing and challenging hegemonic forms of knowledge to produce inclusive, equal and alternative spaces. From this understanding we would like to explore the role of approximating construction and design as tools to build dialogues among different groups.

Learning by doing practices

Insurgent urbanism understands planning and design as forms of knowledge production that emerge from experience and are tested and validated in practice. This dialectical process that starts and ends with action (Friedmann 1987) presupposes the critical reflection and transformation in the tactics and further actions performed by all actors involved. In this sense the idea of learning by doing (Dewey 1986; Ferro 1982) is fundamental and assumes that the concrete act of experimental hands-on work produces not only different types of knowledge but creates the foundations for other forms of dialogue that overcome hegemonic discourses and representations—such as technical drawings for example.

Ferro (1982) argues that our tools, especially drawing tools, act as instruments of alienation of those who actually build the cities, through the artificial separation between those who think and design the spaces and those who build them. In spaces such as favelas and squats, design and build are already inseparable. Urgent needs that go beyond shelter and other factors such as informal power structures (Abramo 2003; Farias 2009; Silva 2005) form a network of living-work-social spaces that are developed and transformed through time.

The dimension of design is usually disregarded or made invisible in the areas built and produced by the urban poor without the presence of architects and urbanists (Miraftab 2015; Roy 2011). The knowledge regarding the construction dimension on the other hand is often dominated by the inhabitants. This is related to the need to build their own environment, but also due to the fact that many inhabitants of favelas and squats work in the construction field, in most cases in precarious and informal jobs. This involves two relevant aspects: from one side, the technical knowledge of construction techniques and materials emerges empirically and has been responsible for allowing the development of complex structures in so-called informal settlements. From another side, the construction workers bring back to these spaces the hegemonic model of building and city production, reproducing the very city that excludes them (C. N. F. dos Santos 1981).

In this context, experiences of a long-term technical assistance combined with research and teaching as in the case of Solano Trindade represent a relevant opportunity to overcome the segmentation and distance between the designers and the constructors, the ones who decide and the ones who experience the spaces. Through this experience we observed the emergence of exchange of different types of knowledge and at the same time the achievement of concrete solutions for real and urgent problems for the inhabitants.

The main methodology developed during COLLOC workshops involves the collective build of small-scale interventions and the simultaneous development of future scenario proposals for Solano Trindade. The interventions address urgent needs of the dwellers that can vary from the construction of a small playground for the children to supporting the construction of new houses or solving leaking problems on the roof. Here they represent the actions proposed by Friedmann (1987). The future scenario proposals are connected to the interventions and have the goal to expand the discussions to broader time frames, concepts and contexts. The future scenario also operates at the academic level as the iteration process of social learning advocated by Friedmann (1987), allowing students and researchers to engage in theoretical reflections and debates that can produce transformation knowledge that can then be re-applied in the local context.

Regarding the interventions, this experience indicates that incorporating the construction dimension was crucial to reduce the hierarchies and to increase the dialogues and trust-building process. By doing hands-on work with the residents of Solano for the construction of something they needed created a solid basis for mutual trust. In this regard it is important to highlight that the trust building process was only possible due to the already established long-term involvement of the local partners/actors.

The possibility of building together also represented a learning process for students and researchers from architecture and urban fields, usually constricted to design and theoretical approaches to reality. Besides, it fostered other forms of communication and dialogues that overcame language barriers not only represented by international actors, but also by the imposing separation promoted by technical language and tools (Illich 1973).

The approximation of concrete interventions and long-term vision-building strategies represented a potential to overcome specific issues that the community dealt with. One example was the construction of a playground in 2018 as a demand from the dwellers to address childrens' need. The decision on where and how to build this playground was connected to a future scenario perspective that envisioned the integration between Solano’s squat and the neighbourhood public Primary school. The group also addressed a relational view of food production and local networks by relating the playground and the existing collective kitchen as well as the vegetable garden from Solano Trindade. Over the years, the playground attracted the children from the school and could be seen as a point for an integration process and a shift in the perception of the squat as an illegal and undesirable space for the neighbourhood (see Figures 6 and Figure 7). These examples showed us that it is necessary to review our tools and methods and to critically reflect on the architect and designer as the sole creator of the spaces (Harvey 2000). It also made clear that approximating design and build can be a powerful tool for creating other bridges of communication and overcoming hegemonic hierarchies. The insurgency of these processes lies in the openness to learn through exchange with non-hegemonic types of knowledge and thus promote concrete transformation not only of the space but of all the actors involved.

Figure 7: Future Scenario proposal in COLLOC 2018 (Source: COLLOC archive).

Effective transformation—creation of a learning environment

The concepts of social learning and social mobilisation applied to the idea of insurgent urbanism represent a shift ‘from anticipatory decision-making to action and social practice’ (Friedmann 1987, 217). This approach involves real-life exchanges and dialogues between all involved and presumes that ‘effective learning comes from the experience of changing reality’ (Friedmann 1987, 217). The conditions build relations and also the tools and methods in each particular context can facilitate or prevent the establishment of those exchanges at a horizontal level.

Planning and designing involves imagining different futures. In order to promote insurgent forms of planning and design it is crucial to decolonise the imagination of the future (Miraftab 2016) in the minds and in the daily practices of all those involved in the production and transformation of the urban spaces.

For Miraftab (2015, 2016) insurgent planning and humane urbanism go beyond what she calls invited spaces, where some citizens’ practices are accepted by the dominant groups. It incorporates the invented spaces, the ones that represent other forms of citizenship and occupation of the space, that challenge and oppose the dominant logic in the city. These are the spaces and practices that are criminalised by the state. This argument breaks the neoliberal logic of inclusion that has guided the theories in planning for most of the 20th century (Miraftab 2016). What we observe in our research and experience is that beyond the invented spaces, there is room for the creation of learning spaces and a ‘learning society in which people are politically active and informed and can engage each other in a rational discourse over the kind of regional life they would want for themselves’ (Friedmann 1987, 200), and we argue that this can lead to effective transformation, with politicisation of all involved actors.

Friedman emphasises the challenges in social learning are based on an idealised view of society that would learn from its errors, when in fact social actors are most commonly avoiding acknowledging their mistakes and therefore learning from them. For him, the learning society would have to undergo special training and education that would increase their participation in city-making processes. He highlights the role of ‘paraprofessionals’ as change agents ‘who encourage, guide, and assist an actor in the process of changing reality’ (Friedmann 1987, 185).

From our experience with Solano, we argue that the Social Movement, academics involved in long-term actions but also the residents with their deep knowledge of their reality are the key agents to produce alternative and emancipatory forms of education towards the transformation of society. None of these actors alone can promote transformation, but it is precisely in the interaction of those multiple forms of knowledge and perspectives that the local context is transformed as well creating transformation knowledge that can then be replicated in different contexts.

The role of immersive activities such as COLLOC workshops involving a range of international scholars and professionals is to act as catalysers of existing processes that involve not only the residents and the social movements, but also a diverse set of other academic and institutional actors that are deeply engaged in long-term actions with Solano.

By combining educational spaces, housing and alternative construction methods, the project of Solano creates a rich field for the development of spaces of learning through a horizontal process of constant exchange between technical and academic knowledge, vernacular and popular knowledge, political and ideological project. These dimensions promote mutual learning for all actors involved, but also broaden the outcomes from Solano to the neighbourhood, to the social movement on a national level and to other actors on an international level.

Action-based processes are crucial for the development of insurgent urbanism. Without disregarding the particularities and specificities of the local context, they can create possibilities to overcome hegemonic discourses and practices. Beyond promoting equal and inclusive planning and design strategies, insurgent urbanism as we understand it aims at reflecting and experimenting other forms of relating to the built and environmental space.

Appointments

Historically the urban poor of Rio de Janeiro, as in most Latin American cities, have developed their own solutions for housing, services and urban space, in a context of inclusion by exclusion in the capitalist system (C. N. F. dos Santos 1981). These solutions have provided a framework of alternative and insurgent practices that should be understood as planning and urbanism (Miraftab 2015; Roy 2011).

Beyond this recognition, in the past decades, many scholars, activists and technicians have engaged in collaborative work producing—along with the inhabitants and other actors such as social movements—forms of an insurgent urbanism. In this context, it is essential to develop a consistent understanding of the role of city building professional training and theoretical reflection in the contemporary world, understanding that the technical-scientific values that guide the practice are inserted in a socio-spatial and historical context (Latour 1993; Friedmann 1987; Latour 2005; Santos 2014).

The paper explored the paths to insurgent urbanism through the lens of three learning dimensions: exchange of knowledges, learning by doing, and mutual learning environments. This analysis was developed from the experience of collaborative practices in the self-organised occupation of Solano Trindade in Brazil.

In the explored case, the long-term interactions between residents, academics, planning and design practitioners have increased not only the legitimacy of the project but also the potential of the development of social learning practices towards societal guidance and social transformation (Friedmann 1987).

While Miraftab's (2015) and Roy's (2011) debates emphasise the acknowledgement of insurgent practices from below as legitimate forms of urbanism, Friedmann (1987) highlights the role of scientific knowledge in order to expand the social learning processes that arise from action-based experiences to produce effective transformation knowledge beyond local contexts.

The iteration process described by Friedmann (1987) can be represented in the COLLOC workshop-series as the yearly transformation and development of the activities that arise from ‘lessons learned’ practices. As described by the author, the process starts and ends with action. But the action in the field is then reflected and transformed both by the academics involved but also by social movement and residents.

All the described processes are possible due to on one hand the long-term cooperation between Brazilian Universities and the occupation and on the other to the presence of the social movement that structures and organises the struggle and also legitimises the local and popular knowledge, challenging constantly the hegemonic academic one. The reported workshops act as immersive actions that catalyse long-term collaborative practices. This indicates that international cooperation short-term projects might have an important role in the expansion and development of local practices, but they should engage with existing local and ideally long-term exchanges between scholars and technicians.

It is important also to highlight that there is still a level of commitment and engagement that is necessary in order to develop this type of actions, especially in the Latin America context. The lack of support from the government, the lack of resources and rigid structure of the university and also the precarity of labour and studying conditions for scholars and students at the academic level can be a hindrance for effective collective and transformative actions. It is important to recognise the effort and work of these groups in the past years and also struggle for these activities to be more inserted in the process of formation of architects and urbanists.

For this transformation, the accumulated knowledge of the poor population and the social movements in self-construction, adaptation and rethinking and reusing spaces can be a way to produce other forms of spatiality and relations toward the existing space. Adding to that, the described collaboration of other actors such as the university, activists, technical assistance, and others can lead to effective and innovative transformation not only of the space but also of the territory and social dynamics in the city.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the MNLM-DC, the dwellers of Solano Trindade, the students and academic partners who have participated in different times and activities since 2014. The reflections proposed in this paper are only possible because of the collective involvement of all actors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number 434672696].

Notes on contributors

Juliana Canedo

Juliana Canedo is a senior researcher at Habitat Unit/TU-Berlin where she holds a fellowship from DFG as Principal Investigator of the research project ‘Beyond the Shelter: understanding the limits and potentialities between emergency and endurance in Refugee Camps in Germany.’ Email: [email protected]

Luciana da Silva Andrade

Luciana da Silva Andrade is Full Professor at PROURB/FAU/UFRJ and coordinator of the research group naMORAR—Nucleo de atividades de extensão, pesquisa e ensino sobre o morar.

Notes

1 Source: IBGE – Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

2 Núcleo de Atividades de Pesquisa e Extensão sobre o Morar (naMORAR/UFRJ), Observatório das Metrópoles (UFRJ), Núcleo Interdisciplinar para Desenvolvimento Social (NIDES/UFRJ), Núcleo de Assessoria Jurídica Popular (NAJUP/UFRJ), Laborátorio de Estudos de Águas Urbanas (LEAU/UFRJ), collective Catálise, MUDA

3 DAC – Development Assistance Committee is a forum within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The current list of countries can be found here: https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-standards/daclist.htm