Participação na era da informação: uma análise do uso das TICs nos processos participativos

Abstract

Although participation in urban planning processes is a requirement for the elaboration of Master Plans in Brazilian municipalities, technocratic behaviors are still predominant, making these processes occur, in general, without genuine popular participation. This context reveals the distance between citizens and rulers, which weakens the democratic dimensions and further reduces popular autonomy. Ensuring inclusion of the population in urban planning is a fundamental condition for the construction of more just and democratic cities. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) create spaces for new and instant connections between individuals. This allows the construction of an interface of collaborative networks on a wide range of topics, including issues related to city and participation. This research aims to analyze the use of ICTs in participatory urban planning processes. This research is based on the following question: What are the difficulties faced in participatory processes and what kind of alternatives do ICTs offer to solve them? To answer these questions, the research carried out a case study of the participatory process of the Raízes da Praia community, in Fortaleza CE, promoted in partnership with the Program of Tutorial Education of the Architecture and Urbanism Course of the Federal University of Ceará (ARQPET) from a housing demand expressed by the community. In this process, collaborative workshops were held with the residents, semi-structured interviews and field observation with the purpose of characterizing the experience and pointing out problems and potentialities of the process. From this, virtual participation devices with potential to help solve the identified problems were selected. Finally, the paper proposes a classification of the devices according to their respective objectives and from the type of connection that they provide between citizens and managers, culminating in a proposal of systematization of the use of the TICs as support to the participatory processes in the planning stages urban.