Dissociation between plan, project and urban interventions

Abstract

This paper draws a theoretical framework of urban plan, project and intervention. It takes into account the context of changes and permanence in the Brazilian urban reality since the 2000s, which deny the historicity of the types of urban intervention (revitalize, requalify and rehabilitate) as being concepts driven by a public action towards the urban financing. Therefore, it is proposed a reflection on the semantic difficulty of these terminologies in teaching, research and public actions. Therefore, the procedure of this article is deductive, carried out through general and specific premises whereby we derive evidences to discuss the Brazilian urban reality, the semantic question of urban planning and urban interventions. Furthermore, we tackle the semantic question of what urban projects are and the conceptual problem behind it, taking in account diverse interpretations of the literature and the study gap in what concerns the urban change driven by policies, plans and programs to the financing of urban projects. Thus, we conclude that the plan is a fraction of urban planning; the urban project, a direct consequence of urbanism. Both constitute, therefore, a theoretical thinking materialized by Urban Operations which conduct public and private financing. Intervention, in turn, seems to be only the technical result of previous theoretical thinking, therefore, a definition where urban design is found, detailing and applying ergonometric principles to the effectiveness of the urban plan and project. Certain of the controversy behind the theoretical prepositions, hypotheses and research questions, we highlight the introductory effort of this article in the light of the actuality of the meanings of urbanism for teaching, research and the public power.