Intersected conflicts: The local and the metropolitan in territory management

Abstract

Since the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, the creation of Metropolitan Regions is attributed to the Legislative Assembly of the States. On the other hand, the municipalities are directly linked to the local daily logics and, at the same time, are inserted in a supra-local scale of power and governance. This apparent contradiction reveals an interscalar power struggle over territory, expressed in the quest to capture local development plans, programs, and projects with supra-local justifications. This study aims to understand how the dispute for territorial projects takes into account the interscalar conflict, articulating Urban Planning and Management in the metropolitan territory. The research highlights a set of instruments (plans, projects) that reveals the forms of centralization and decentralization of Planning and Management, in the Metropolitan Region of Natal, RN, Brazil, in the last decade (2006-2016). We performed a bibliographical research on territorial planning and management, as well as decentralization and collaborative governance. We also performed a documentary research of laws and decrees, and local urban projects with metropolitan incidence.