We examine the academic production of Brazilian Geography, and its contribution, and criticism on the state planning. At first, we discuss the Brazilian geographical production related to planning, present in the Brazilian Journal of Geography (RBG), edited by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)[1], since 1939. Next, we address our understanding of the planning and production of space, highlighting the dimension of urban planning.
The concept of geography as the science of diagnosing the physical-natural environment for planning purposes is introduced in the initial issues of the RBG. Subsequently, the contributions incorporated other themes and problems, such as urbanization, and regional imbalances, questions of theory and method, revealing a dialogue with other areas of knowledge and similarly, with theoretical geography. There is an effort to assert the power of reason (scientific and technically based) over “spontaneity” and over the market, so that the State would be the bearer of reason in the necessary ordering of the territory.
From the point of view of a critical urban geography, with an analysis based on a Marxist-Lefebvrian foundation, it starts from the idea that planning is the State way over the space, which requires a critique of the State and the demystification of its rationality and neutrality. If, through economic planning, the State moves the socially produced surplus towards conjunctural defined policies, the urban interventions initiated in the 19th century and widespread in the 20th and 21st centuries show how the State, through planning, instrumentalizes the production of space as an economic sector, colonizing the everyday life, deepening socio-spatial segregation and being fundamental to the reproduction of social relations of production, as adverted by Lefebvre (2016).
[1] Institute of Brazilian Statistics – IBGE - has been created in 1938 during the New State policy, on Getúlio Vargas government.
Mots clés : brazilian geography|planning |production of space|State|everyday life
A103933IA