2143 Law, Justice, and Urban Space
International Research Group on Law and Urban Space
Room: C4.06
Chair: Patrícia Branco
Bruno Franco Alves | Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora / Universidade de Coimbra
A judicialização das lutas urbanas por moradia em Belo Horizonte-MG
Abstract
A negação do direito à moradia, a despeito de sua consagração constitucional, ainda é uma realidade social brasileira. Em relatório apresentado no ano de 2017, a Fundação João Pinheiro estima que o déficit habitacional, em 2015, corresponde a 6.186.503 milhões de domicílios. Entre as unidades da federação com maior déficit absoluto, Minas Gerais aparece em segundo lugar (552 mil), atrás apenas de São Paulo (1,306 milhão). A região metropolitana de Belo Horizonte (RMBH), capital do estado, acumula deficit de 153.069 domicílios, dos quais 152.606 no âmbito urbano. (FJP, 2017). Nesse contexto, diversos são os exemplos de ocupações urbanas de prédios e terrenos sem uso ou subutilizados que na maior parte das vezes resultam da organização de seus moradores junto a movimentos sociais e organizações populares que reivindicam por meio de uma ação prática e direta– a própria ocupação- o uso desses terrenos ociosos que descumprem a função socioambiental da propriedade urbana. Somente na RMBH são 24 ocupações espalhadas por diversos locais e que agregam cerca de 14 mil famílias ou aproximadamente 55 mil pessoas. (Nascimento; Libânio, 2016). No presente trabalho, proponho analisar o fenômeno das ocupações urbanas motivadas pela luta por moradia, seus significados, impactos no na cidade. O percurso do trabalho parte da compreensão das ocupações urbanas como reação a um contexto de urbanização historicamente marcado pela segregação e exclusão sócio-espacial, pela influência do poder econômico do mercado imobiliário e pela insuficiência de políticas públicas garantidoras de direitos. Interessa como problema central apresentar e analisar as ações por meio das quais as ocupações por moradia são juridicamente contestadas, com ênfase nos discursos constantes nas decisões judiciais presentes nessas ações de forma a perceber como o poder judiciário tem abordado essas formas plurais de habitação/reinvindicação do espaço urbano, especialmente no que diz respeito à moradia e ao direito integral à cidade em sua tensão com o argumento da propriedade individual e privada.
Patrícia Branco | Centro de Estudos Sociais
The Multiple Geographies of Justice on the 21st Century: Reflections about what Courts represent within Territory and Space
Abstract
I begin by quoting the Genoese architect Renzo Piano, author of the new Paris court project, still under construction: "A court is like a small town that has so many different things that need to be in harmony." The Court is here invoked, firstly, to speak of geography, territory, and judicial maps. This will be the first axis of analysis: the court in the territory, which is part of a jurisdiction, which is present in the city, but also in the countryside; which may be central but also peripheral; which may be near, but also far from the populations it must serve; which may be fixed, or have an itinerant character. Secondly, the court appears as a space. A space that serves as an interface between the different users, and of the various users among themselves, with their diverse identities, cultures, knowledge, professions, families and conflicts. It is a space within which some people can relate and may enter habitually and others only occasionally, and that thus conditions the lived experiences, and these same experiences, in turn, condition the aspirations and meanings that people relate to that space. Analyzing the court as space implies thinking about its physical component, and this will be the second axis of analysis. The court is, in most cases, a building with some particular external and internal characteristics. This building, which today has multiple architectures, serves to legitimize a certain structure and form of power, which is the judiciary. To discuss these axes of analysis - the court as territory and space, and its physical forms - I will use the following binomials: near and far; urban and rural; center and periphery; fixed and itinerant; physical and virtual.
María Novo | Universidade da Coruña
Carmen Lamela | Universidade da Coruña
Social versus legal process in cases of local urban corruption
Abstract
In recent years, an important social alarm against corruption has generated, especially around the public one. In Spain, it has been linked particularly to local politics and specifically to urban planning. There is definitely a true “social alarm”, linked not only with political parties and lobbies interests and their use of it but also and especially with social movements, extremely active in recent years, and with public and published opinion. “Social alarm” has very positive aspects; for instance, it actives surveillance and a citizens awareness to deal with reported crime. But it also has its potential harms. Our overall objective is to identify the factors and mechanisms that in these processes represent a threat for the proper functioning of institutions and civil society, by identifying those who generate “false guilty” cases; in order to contribute in some way to (1) the theoretical explanation of social alarm and punitivism, (2) the diagnosis and recommendations for the improvement of governance in urban planning, (3) and to identification and operational definition of intervening variables in the fields of “social climate”, legal procedure, and the characterization of the prosecuted facts.
Veronica Pecile | École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
The strategic use of law in the social movements for the commons. The case study of Palermo, Sicily
Abstract
During the post-2008 period, Southern European social movements have increasingly developed practices of commoning as local responses to austerity politics. In urban contexts, in particular, communities are building bottom-up forms of welfare and reconfiguring solidarity as a radical political principle. Among this constellation of practices, some movements recur to a strategic use of legal tools to assert their claims as well as to imagine solutions to the crisis of political representation. The goal of this work is to investigate the counter-hegemonic use of law adopted by movements reclaiming the commons after the 2008 crisis. This strategy somehow echoes the legalistic tactic of African-American activists for civil rights, such as the Black Panthers, who demanded from police officers a full implementation of civil code norms to protect the oppressed subjects. What is new in the contemporary scenario, though, is the creative use of law adopted by activists attempting to oppose austerity politics. This work focuses on Palermo as a context in which those who struggle for the commons exploit a variety of "juridical shortcuts" to assert their claims. On the one hand, legal agreements concerning the use of commons were concluded between the activists and the municipality; on the other hand, movements are developing practices of grassroots welfare that openly challenge the legitimacy of the public actor. This case study will help shedding light on a crucial dilemma for today's movements for the commons: how to stabilize the practices of commons without depriving them of their transformative potential? To what extent can the law serve as a strategic instrument for movements to assert their claims, and to ultimately create new institutions?