Participative urban planning: The challenge of technical language

Abstract

Understanding language as a structuring element of the human relationship with reality and the production of the city as a collective process by right, this work aims to elucidate some of the effects of the urban planning field's technical language on citizens' ability to intervene in decision making processes concerning the city and on the possibility of these processes fulfilling their potential as arenas for democratic education. Disciplinary and institutional power structures that determine the symbolic efficacy of specialist languages are unveiled through the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. These theories allow for the identification of its exclusionary effects in two participatory urban planning processes (a big rezoning project and a small favela urbanization plan) carried out in the city of Belo Horizonte in 2015-2016. An approach to democratic theory allows for a contribution to the discussion on experts normative role in inclusive contexts and for outlining strategies towards the improvement of professional practice.