The Urban Reform in Brazil and its Semantics

Abstract

At the turn of the twenty-first century, urban scholars welcomed Brazil's City Statute and the Ministry of Cities as important normative and institutional frameworks for urban policy. A decade later, the convictions were tested by the limits such proposals represented. Years later, after the implementation of the statute and the ministry, the political and intellectual field connected to the urban reform was in an evaluation stage. At the moment of its institutionalization, one more cycle of urban reform closes. However, it is worth questioning: What has become known as urban reform? It is argued that the answer can be constructed from elements that would define a semantics that this expression encompasses. This paper seeks to present and discuss these questions, as well as identify limits and contradictions of urban reform as a possible and(or) imagined horizon.