- The Difficulty to integrate local demanded Investments to the overall strategic Plan for the City: a critic to the “Orcamento Participativo in Porto Alegre”    110 kb by    Furtado, Carlos | carlos.furtado@ufrgs.br    Short Outline The paper is a critical evaluation of the 'Orcamento Participativo' implemented by the Labors Party in Porto Alegre, and its failure in integrating local demanded decisions to a strategic plan. Abstract THE DIFICULTY TO INTEGRATE LOCAL DEMANDED INVESTMENTS TO AN OVERALL STRATEGIC PLAN FOR THE CITY: a critic to the ''Orcamento Participativo'' in Porto Alegre In 1989, a member of the “Partido dos Trabalhadores-PT” (Labor Party) was elected the mayor of the Porto Alegre Municipality, the capital of the Rio Grande do Sul State in Brazil. In the same year the “Orçameneto Participativo - OP” was created with the objective to directly involve the organized population in the process of decision making for the application of part of the municipal budget in urban development projects. This new form of public administration became a worldwide known experience of popular participation. In relation to this experience Charles Landry says in his book The creative city: “The hallmark of Genro’s administration was putting into practice the concept of citizen control, allowing the public to make the decisions of government by getting local professional, business and advocacy groups to join community boards that set strategic, long-term policy directions for the city.” (Landry, 2000, p.194). The question we put in our paper is that the OP in Porto Alegre was unable to integrate local demanded decisions to a strategic plan, because: 1) there was no a strategic plan for the city; 2) there was not integration of different goals and objectives of the different sectors of society in a integrated development process; 3) It became impossible to involve vulnerable inhabitants on matters not directly related to their immediate surroundings or their own living conditions ; 4) the housing programs developed by the program failed as the families were not correctly involved in the decision process. Most interventions resulted in further lack of social and economic inclusion and development and, in most of the housing programs a process of gentrification. Keywords Local Administration Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2007: Urban Trialogues   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper