[en] The complex and contradictory nature of Brazilian society finds its expression in the city of Curitiba. The capital of Paranà State was pioneer in urban politics and practices during the ‘70s and ‘80s and is worldwide known for its sustainability. However, the general approach of its urban planning reinforced a spatial segregation that reflects the wide economic and cultural gap among the population.
This research analyses Vila Nossa Senhora da Luz, a marginal district where the failure of land management policies is made visible by the degradation of the public space, the increasing houses’ introspection and the poor social cohesion.
The lack of public control represented a chance for the majority of families to initiate an unauthorized development that resulted in a widespread private property speculation. This made of the neighbourhood a paradigmatic case of defeat of public purposes over the management of a social housing plan.
After a summary of Curitiba's urban and housing policies and a contextualization of the selected area, our work proposes a program of urban regeneration which acts through the reform of the urban fabric using a multiple-scale approach. The program attributes the public realm the role of transformation agent or catalyst by promoting participation and the switch from formal (urban policies) to informal (handmade urbanism) strategies. The chosen strategy, in facts, moves toward the enhancement of the self- regenerative capacity of the urban fabric, distancing itself from the tabula rasa model, still commonly applied in Brazilian urban politics.
