The urban planning sector in the city of São Paulo: institutional changes, legacies and actors
This research analyzes the sector responsible for urban planning policy in the city of São Paulo, verifying how the bureaucracy was institutionally framed and modified during the existence of the Municipal Department of Urban Development (SMDU) between 2009 and 2016. The historical trajectory of the sector shows that for decades its institutional structure has gradually changed through its different configurations (Department of Urban Planning, General Coordination of Planning - COGEP, Municipal Secretariat of Planning - SEMPLA and SMDU), although it has permanently maintained certain functions related to: formulation of plans, regulation of land use and occupation and production and management of municipal data. With the creation of SMDU in 2009 significant changes are made, which later allows from the administrative restructuring of 2013, a relevant inflection in the sector with the expansion of its functions. One of the hypotheses is that although the institutional design brings elements of innovation - with the creation of the area to control the social function of ownership and assimilation management of real estate assets, as well as exclusive divisions for management of participatory processes and promotion of research - the sector of planning still remains similar to the old technical-normative formats, with heavy legacy left in the bureaucracy. For the development of the research, the following methods are employed: document analysis, process tracing and interviews with elites (bureaucratic, technical and political) in order to verify the mechanisms, triggers and interferences of the agents in the processes of institutional changes in the urban governance environment .