The right to the everyday space: housing and autonomy in the master plan of a metropolis

Abstract

Lefebvre’s proposition of a right to the city has been widely used in academic and extra-academic circles, with a tendency to oversimplification. This paper resumes some aspects of this proposition that we consider fundamental, and then discusses their relationship to the legal order inaugurated by the City Statute, particularly with regard to the principles of participation and autonomy. The third part explores a possibility of concrete amplification of collective autonomy at the microlocal scale, drawing from studies developed for the Master Plan for the Integrated Development of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (Brazil). Also based on these studies, the fourth part summarizes the barriers to autonomy in the existing institutions, and the last part outlines the proposal for a typology of everyday spaces to structure articulations that could favor it.