Increasing social equity in transport planning: a case study in Fortaleza, Brazil

State-led land takings have been at the forefront of the battle ignited by a light rail development project in Fortaleza, Brazil. The project was planned to repurpose an old railroad upon which informal settlements have become established over the past fifty years due to a multitude of reasons including urbanization, lack of governmental resources to create serviced land, and inflated land values due to speculation. In order to clarify the land expropriation, the justification of the light rail development, and the planning process in general, this work includes a literature review, a spatial analysis, participant observations, and interviews with formal state planners and informal residents affected by the development. This work attempts to understand how the planning process must be improved if planners and government officials truly want to mitigate social inequities created by the planning process and progress towards more socially just planning, with a focus on public transportation investments. The findings include discrepancies in the planning process in terms of participatory strategies and engagement of civil society. In order to reconcile these gaps, a clear planning process including information sharing, public educating, and participation benchmarks needs to be established. Furthermore, pro-poor and social justice goals need to be explicitly supported by being tied to municipal budgets for projects, the planning field itself needs to establish diversity goals and accountability measures in order to increase representation of underrepresented groups among professional planners, and emphasis needs to be placed on research in general, especially qualitative research that produces more insightful and holistic planning resolutions. In Fortaleza, Brazil, these principles can be tangibly achieved as the government organizes itself to establish protocols and planning systems as civil society is able to insert itself in these initial stages of development.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.U.P.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Urban Planning

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2017

Author dc:creator

• Kaur, Gurdeep

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lee, Bumsoo
• Doussard, Marc
• Freitas, Clarissa

• Urban planning
• Planning
• Regional planning
• Land use
• Displacement
• Land expropriation
• Transportation planning
• Brazil
• Fortaleza
• Capitalism

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Gurdeep Kaur

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/98109

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F98109