New perspectives for subversive planning and its (possible) implications to form urban and regional planners – the Brazilian case

Abstract

In previous work, presented in the IX International Colloquio of Geocrítica of 2007, the need of a conceptual and, till, epistemoligical reorientation of planning was apointed for turning it capable to propitiate a quottrue participation"to citizens involved in planning processes. Now, we intend to move forward in this discussion and to ask in what measure a new understanding of planning would demands a revision in the ways planners are formed at the schools of planning at the universities, especially in Brazil that supplies the reference reality for our reflection. For this, the present work introduces three elements as constituent of a new planning mode - communication, space and time - that refer to the main contradictions in the contemporary world - instrumental versus communicative logics abstract versus concrete practices indolent versus cosmopolitan thinking - and that threaten the own social coexistence itself. The subversive planning intends to be, in this sense, constructive in the measure in that it tries to be a quotmediation"among those contradictions what means nothing else and nothing less than to overcome them. In that case, the planner as mediator, that contributes to the overcome of contradictions, assumes functions of the highest complexity and becomes, like this, an agent of largest importance for the progress of a transformation directed to empower communicative rationality, differential space of use values and cosmopolitan thinking based on the social experiences of the explored and oppressed populations. It is in this sense of identifiying distances between those propositions of the subversive planning and the urban and regional planner's current formation in Brazil that we analyze, in the end of the present rehearsal, the characteristics of the courses with respect to planning issues in the masters degree programs on urban and regional planning in Brazil.