Precarious Settlement Upgrading and Racial Capitalism: Planning Authoritarianism and Its Crossroads for Democracy

A key critique of urban planning in postcolonial contexts is the persistence of Western/Eurocentric approaches that disregard the spatial production of Black and Indigenous populations as legitimate. In Brazil, despite shifts from authoritarian to democratic governments, racialised territories have consistently been subjected to state intervention. While policies have evolved—from deregulation and disinvestment to infrastructural investment—the underlying patterns of violence, dispossession, and undemocratic practices endure. This article explores the connection between Brazil’s authoritarian urban planning history and the tenets of racial capitalism. Through a qualitative research synthesis, we examine scholarly literature focusing on the Growth Acceleration Programme on Urbanisation of Precarious Settlements (PAC‐UAP) during the Workers’ Party (PT) administration (2003–2016). Our aim is to (a) identify the conceptual and analytical approaches used by researchers, and (b) put these studies into dialogue with racial capitalism. By doing so, we unveil the inherent non‐democratic tradition of planning in Brazil despite the implementation of a progressive policy. Furthermore, we point to the relevance of using racial capitalism as a lens to understand the causes of structural violence that remain in urban planning.