Ocupações urbanas, planejamento conflitual e territorialidade

Abstract

In the downtown area of Natal, highlighting the lack of access to housing for low-income populations and denouncing the significant number of vacant properties, members of the Movimento de Luta nos Bairros, Vilas e Favelas (MLB – Movement for Struggle in Neighborhoods, Villages, and Slums) have been organizing urban occupations of idle buildings as a way to demand the right to housing and to the city center. These occupations are central to the process of political engagement and education of the movement’s members, who are primarily individuals experiencing housing insecurity. Beyond serving as a place of residence, the occupations also function as political organizations through which the movement expands its base, strengthens its political power, and publicizes its causes and struggles to society. We propose to understand these occupations as forms of conflictual planning (Tanaka, Oliveira, and Coli, 2019), which engage planning as a political tool of resistance to urban conflicts and as a means of creating spaces for dialogue with the State. In this context, the general objective of this work is to analyze how organized occupations have been part of conflictual planning processes that claim the right to housing and territoriality in downtown Natal. Specifically, this research aims to: (1) investigate the strategies of the housing rights movement in Brazil; (2) understand the formation of popular territories around downtown Natal; and (3) characterize the MLB’s repertoire of action in the city center. To achieve these goals, the research relied primarily on literature and document review from various sources, semi-structured interviews with MLB-RN coordinators and members of the movement’s legal advisory team, and a workshop conducted with residents of the Palmares Occupation. Among the findings, we highlight that in Natal, participation in institutional spaces, street protests and public demonstrations, and most notably, the organization of occupations, are interrelated strategies in the political struggle led by the MLB to expand the right to housing. Throughout the occupations organized in the city center, the defense of territoriality— ensuring residents can remain near their places of origin—has become an increasingly important objective and strategy of the movement.