Unequal Development and Regional Planning in Brazil

Abstract

Why planning in a peripheral socio-spatial formation such as Brazil? If planning is considered an instrument that should favor an alignment to capital, one hypothesis reads: it is planned to reduce capital uncertainties in its valorization process. However, if we consider planning as an instrument available to the masses to mitigate socio-spatial inequalities and to respond individual and collective needs and interests, another hypothesis argues: it is planned to control the capital in its tendency towards an unlimited resource extraction from nature and vital energy from human beings in its valorization process. This text’s purpose is, therefore, to analyze the regional planning in Brazil (a peripheral socio-spatial formation submitted to the logic of the unequal capital development) based on the difference of both hypotheses. The evidence shows that regional planning – as an instrument to control capital in its unstoppable tendency to extract resources from nature and vital energy from human beings – remains unavailable in Brazil to the collectivities that would benefit from it, if regional planning were oriented to reduce social-spatial inequalities and meeting individual and collective needs and interests.