Urban governance and infrastructure: public-private partnerships for urban rail and the planning system of the São Paulo metropolis
The research aims to understand the way infrastructure projects implemented by public-private partnerships (PPPs) change the functioning of sectoral policies and the planning system of the metropolis of São Paulo. The analysis is addressed to the content of urban governance, whose distance from the public and the lack of transparency of planning in metropolitan transport policy is only reinforced by PPPs, something which contrasts with the collaborative planning advocated and consolidated with urban policy after redemocratization. The analysis is drawn from the modeling phase, which is the conception and legal-financial structuring of infrastructure projects capable of combining attractiveness to the private sector with the satisfaction of a public purpose. The new lines 6 and 18 of the São Paulo subway were analyzed in the research. The analysis demanded the revision of some concepts assumed in the activity of planning. They are the dimensions of urban regulation, the spatial regime of the city and the planning system itself, which are adjusted to the purpose of characterizing situations before and after the introduction of PPPs. As a result, we demonstrate the reciprocally contingent relationship between PPP modeling and planning tools. The research concludes that the content of urban governance in the sectorial policy of metropolitan transport remains abide by bureaucratic hierarchy but deepens its deficit in transparency and democratic communication. This occurs even though it recognizes intense activism and social organization in society.