As palavras e o concreto no planejamento do transporte urbano: uma análise das experiências de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

In spite of a rich history of urban planning throughout the last century, comprising several plans and projects devised by the many planning and management organizations and entities, the city of Belo Horizonte suffers from an apparent incongruence between what is proposed and what is actually executed. Actions dictated by the plan are often neglected, while other unpredicted measures are brought to existence, often as an emergency, giving way to a “remedial” planning. This phenomenon is perceived as a great hurdle to the promotion of integrated, continuous urban development, and feeds a general perception of lack of planning. One of the great areas of urban planning is transportation planning, a theme ever more crucial to the citizens’ social experience and maintenance of life in cities. This work attempts to promote a critical evaluation of two historic moments in Belo Horizonte’s transportation planning: the so-called comprehensive planning, championed by metropolitan-scale agencies during the military dictatorship government and the municipal urban planning era, following the 1988 Federal Constitution. The selection of these specific historic moments is due to their inherent differences regarding scope, methodology and political aspects. Official planning documents were consulted, and their effectiveness was evaluated. The reasons for the frequent disregard towards these plans’ proposals were sought. To provide support to this analysis, interviews with technicians who participated of the creation of those plans were conducted, seeking to allow a deeper comprehension of the historic, economic and political context in which the documents were written. The interviews act as an auxiliary data-collection procedure, in addition to the bibliographic data. The record of their experiences is an aid to the possible reasons for the failure of materialization of those plans, allowing an analytical appreciation of the planning documents through the eyes of the planner, besides pointing to possible institutional and technical solutions to create more effective plans in the future.