Governança e relatório de ponderação de discussão pública: contribuição ao planejamento urbano participativo

Abstract

Cities concentrate most of the Brazilian population and represent the challenge of reconciling economic development with environmental preservation and social justice, guaranteeing living conditions that are synthesized in the right to the city. Therefore, public policies are determinants of the fulfillment or not of the social functions of cities, which led to the architecture of a new and fundamental branch of Law, the Urbanistic. For all constitutional, legal and infralegal predictions, Urbanism advocates a form of equation of issues that necessarily implies popular participation, is the democratic management of cities. Only with popular involvement in the daily issues of urban spaces can there be a concertation of behavioral interests, both state and private, building a city oriented towards the common good. In the effort to effect the democratic management of the city, instruments such as debates, hearings and public consultations are foreseen, which are mandatory at all stages of public policies, from setting the agenda, preparing the proposals, implementing them and evaluating them. participatory the basic instrument of urban policy that must be elaborated and/or periodically reviewed with maximum popular participation. However, the democratic ideal is at most limited to the formal aspect and emptied of material meaning, because, even if the public authority conducts public discussions, no devolution or response is given to eventual and desirable manifestations. In Brazilian Urban Law there is no specific obligation for public agents to report, ponder, and respond to each and every participation received, thus the decisive criterion and the extent to which demonstrations have been used remains a secret not only suspect but frontally opposed to constitutional and legal aims, showing a systemic failure in the institutional arrangement of participatory democracy. Thus, the descriptive bibliographic research addresses contemporary theories of democracy, as well as normative aspects of the Brazilian Democratic State of Law and, from a comparative perspective, seeks from Portuguese Law the foundations and characteristics of this complementary and essential mechanism to the participatory democracy of Urban Law: the public discussion weighting report. Consistent with deepening the right of manifestation (speech) of the citizen, imposes on the State the duty to receive, consider and respond (listen) and explain, while at the same time implementing several of the principles pertaining to public administration, enshrining subjective rights, especially those of participation. The public discussion weighting report enhances active citizenship, as it is a formal and legal document that addresses fundamental aspects of democratic management: the context (with place, moment and subject), the subjects (all present in public discussions), participations and conclusions, exposing the “how” and “whys” of the entire decision making process. It is an instrument capable of giving a new approach to the public discussions from which it exudes, creating a new relationship between people and state, repairing the dysfunctionality of the political system by which citizens transfer power to the state, but insubstantial guarantees that public action will be in favor of social interests.