Insurgent planning?

Under what conditions, planning can be transformative? While also acknowledging Critical Urban Studies’ general skepticism around the transformative power of urban planning policies, this article reflects on the possibilities of planning in facilitating enduring urban change. It does so by scrutinizing the Brazilian process of institutionalization of the notion of the Right to the City (RTTC) and its effects on the daily lives of vulnerable residents of the city of Fortaleza. Using the theorectical lenses of Insurgent Planning literature, the research offers some insights for examining the contradictory processes of rights based inclusion and material exclusion. On one side, it reveals an association of RTTC planning policies with neoliberal ideologies neutralizing the political gains of earlier urban social movements. On the other side, having residents check on the outcomes of state practices and adopting an attitude of not giving up on political confrontation, when deemed necessary, has proven an efficient way to materialize the redistribution of urban resources toward the excluded. The fidings are grounded in six years of field research on/about informal residents’ struggle for adequate living conditions in a peripheral region of the city called Grande Bom Jardim.