FINAL THOUGHTS
Urban planners play a unique role as educators, policy makers, and technical experts in the realm of housing and land use and possess the ability to draw on interdisciplinary connections to create the framework for a more equitable future. Our capstone team — comprised of urban planning, architecture, and public policy students — was given a unique opportunity to be a part of an incredibly strong and inspirational housing movement. The movement does not lack expertise or manpower, but rather the programmatic and financial support necessary to scale up and bridge the gaps left by the profitmotivated housing market. In this context, our team sought to lend support to the movement by advocating for the legislative framework drafted by UNMP, which would provide the necessary mechanisms for a significant scaling up of autogestão housing.
152 • CONCLUSION
The team achieved this ultimate objective through several deliverables hosted on a dynamic, widely accessible, and interactive website. The deliverables can be broadly categorized as: •
Easily digestible and shareable educational materials that describe Brazil’s housing crisis, autogestão, and collective property. These materials inform movement members and the public more broadly of key issues and how autogestão and collective property may forge a better way forward for housing production in Brazil.
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Storytelling and interactive mapping, with a specific emphasis on amplifying the voices of those low-income individuals and families, mostly women of color, who became the protagonists of housing solutions by pioneering the self-management model.
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Complex policy research, demonstrating the ubiquity of autogestão and collective property worldwide, highlighting the key facets of successful programs, and providing specific recommendations for UNMP’s proposed bill.
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Environmental policy and planning, specifically through work with the Mutirões Dorothy Stang, Jerônimo Alves e Martin Luther King site, but also through the creation of a highly transferable and easily understandable suite of APP resources for use by housing projects facing environmental challenges.
