Urban Consortium Operations in medium-sized cities: searching for balance in urban projects

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the impacts of Urban Consortium Operations in medium-sized municipalities, with a population between 100 thousand and 500 thousand inhabitants and not located in metropolitan regions. Urban Consortium Operations are instruments for the implementation of large urban projects in which the granting of construction and urban benefits would finance investments in structural urban transformations, social improvements and environmental enhancement. Even being one of the most controversial instruments of the City's Statute, the best-known research on operations explores large national metropolises. The present article, however, carried out a survey of the experiences of operations in medium-sized Brazilian cities in order to understand the balance between benefits and expected outcomes of the projects using of the analysis of legislation and normative decrees, publications in official newspapers, documents and local news, in addition to direct contacts with local city halls. In conclusion, throughout the article, it is exposed the imbalance between the incentives given to the private sector and the investments of environmental and social nature arising from the operations. Finally, the article questions the suitability of the instrument for the projects analyzed in medium-sized cities.