Between concepts and practice: building identities and metropolitan places through the planning process in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte

Abstract

The planning of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, set in motion in the late 1970s, underwent an important process of transformation: after a hiatus period in the 1990s, the metropolitan project was resumed along with the University, seeking to overcome the experience of technocratic bases of the military period and to assume an increasingly participatory basis. This new model of metropolitan planning is based on the idea that it is the planning process (perhaps more than the final plans) that allows a democratic management of the territory of the metropolis. To that end, the UFMG, in the elaboration of the Master Plan of Integrated Development of the MRBH, relies on the creation of a metropolitan identity and the recognition of metropolitan places in which the metropolitan citizen can share a daily life endowed with rules built and shared locally. The purpose of this article is to further discuss these concepts that are important references to the current metropolitan planning process, based on the practical experiences that have unfolded so far in order to broaden the debate about the possibilities and limitations of each one of them.