Participatory experiences in urban planning and management: a systematic review

The democratization of discussions about urban planning and management is a relatively recent process. It is based on the articles 182 and 183 of the 1988 Brazilian Federal Constitution and Law 10,257/2001 (City Statute), which consolidated the Master Plans as a basic instrument of the developmental policy and urban expansion of municipalities and made popular participation mandatory during its design and implementation. Aim: To understand how the participatory experiences were during the Master Plans revision process in different Brazilian municipalities in consequence of the obligatoriness established by Law 10.257/2001. Methodology: The methodologic procedure was a systematic review of academic researches (theses and dissertations) on Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations - BDTD, data collected from participatory proceeding, systematization, and analysis of the results. Results: The review identified: (1) the main characteristics of the researches in terms of their structure, area of knowledge, keywords, (2) the instruments of democratic management provided for the urban legislation and the respective participatory tools proposed by the Ministry of Cities and adopted by the evaluated municipalities, and (3) the main difficulties faced, as well as the advances and potentialities of including participation in urban planning and management. Discussion: This research found out that the adoption of the instruments of democratic management, as well as the participatory tools, for a large number of studied municipalities do not support establishing that the participatory processes were effective, as a consequence of events that weakened them. Nevertheless, advances and potentialities to be consolidated were detected.