2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The 2009 Participatory Master Plan of Fortaleza (PDPFor), after historic local and national struggles for the right to the city, innovated by establishing areas of the city intended for the permanence of low-income residents and for land regularization of social interest, the Special Social Interest Zones (ZEIS). In 2012, the Fortaleza Planning Institute (Iplanfor) was recreated and a bridge was opened for the knowledge of these areas, the mobilization of territorial community leaders and the participatory implementation of the established design. 

The main goal of community-based urban planning was to experience the inclusion of residents as decision-makers and urban planners, empowered in community knowledge, in the interventions and policies to be implemented or improved and in their social rights. The aim was to broaden the understanding and the interconnection between institutional and community players, so as to enable the exchange of experiences and the politicisation of citizenship and the search for the realisation of rights, giving priority to the community view. 

The most striking innovation of this experience was the partnership with university institutions, which mobilized their pedagogical and multidisciplinary apparatus and territorial insertion, in order to promote popular involvement and integration of knowledge, thus allowing joint action focused on the priorities of the communities participating in the planning, on urban political engagement, on cultural and knowledge exchanges between actors with different profiles and on the awareness of the public actors involved in front of a new model of shared territorial management.

This experience began with the participatory production of the plans after the establishment of the ZEIS management councils, articulating various institutional and community representations. During the experience of preparing the PIRFs, the community planning evaluation methodology involved the validation and approval of the products prepared technically by university institutions, supervised by the Iplanfor technical team and only approved after discussion and adjustments by community players, who critically questioned and recommended reforms in the PIRF products. 

The planning of the PIRFs promoted the approximation and integration of various social public policies (transport, health, land tenure, economic development, etc.) and at various levels (municipal, state and federal) to their beneficiaries, who built during meetings, visits and workshops the implementation of the "ZEIS Policy", associated with the municipal land regularization policy. 

The community planning of the "Policy on Special ZEIS" is monitored and supervised by participatory and community instances and mechanisms, such as the methodology for evaluating the products of the community planning, which were only approved after discussion, adjustments and recommendations by the community actors, and the Permanent Forum of the ZEIS, an instance that brings together management councils and representatives of the Public Power to monitor the PIRFs and the "Policy on Special ZEIS" in Fortaleza.

The experience had a profound impact on knowledge and data generation about the territories, valuing community knowledge, integrating insurgent planning initiatives, strengthening neighborhood relations, politicizing and empowering communities for a dignified life with full access to the benefits of urban living.

Website: https://zonasespeciais.fortaleza.ce.gov.br/ (External link)