Uma outra cidade é possível: reflexões sobre mobilidade urbana popular e solidária

Abstract

This thesis discusses the structuring role of urban mobility in the spatial and social conformation of cities. The multiplicity of urban tissues in Latin American metropolises, with a spatial distribution that segregates the poorest populations in increasingly distant areas and devoid of quality public transport, presents us with the challenge of thinking about other forms of urban articulation and generating alternatives to traditional networks and infrastructures, considering the pluralities of people and their choices. In addition, the crisis in public transportation systems emerges as an opportunity for change, considering the lack of investments in public transport systems and the increasing and significant decrease in the volume of passengers using buses in recent decades in Latin American cities. In a crisis scenario, opportunities arise to articulate new ways of producing urban mobility and, as a consequence, of producing new urban spatialities. Traditional economies are also affected by the crisis and in the popular economy we see many advances and barriers to the transformation of the precarious component of global networks to the fundamental component of a plural economy. In this context, profound transformations in the regulatory mechanisms that govern daily relations and public policy guidelines are necessary. Similarly, the construction of a popular and solidary urban mobility necessarily involves new regulatory frameworks that consider the plurality of the needs and desires of the population, the relations of mutual collaboration, social solidarity, democracy, security, environmental conservation and sustainability.