Anderson, Dale, "People or Gender? Planning by Marginalised Groups in Viçosa, Brazil

In North America, planning is a profession with both a long history and a history of service to the public good. How effectively the public has been served, however, has been a subject of considerable debate amongst the profession's critics. Feminist theorists in particular have argued that the profession has consistently failed to perceive or respond to women's planning needs. In contrast, Brazil is a country without such a rich planning history, and is just now waking to the value of urban planning. As of 1988, all communities with twenty thousand or more residents have been required to prepare planning strategies known as director plans. Given the marginalisation women have experienced in North American communities, it seems likely that the needs of women in Brazilian communities might be similarly forgotten in the flurry to prepare such plans. One of the best ways to ensure this doesn't happen is to involve women in preparing these plans and, therefore, in shaping their own communities.

With this in mind, this thesis initially proposed to examine the involvement of women (as public citizens) in the urban planning process in Vicosa, Brazil. However, once fieldwork began, it became apparent that the municipality did not follow a formal planning process as might be found in a North American community (despite the existence of requirements for such a process), and that the marginalisation which existed in the planning process was not one based on gender per se, but predominantly one based on privilege arising from economic wealth, geographic location or political influence. Thus, while planning failed women, it also failed other marginalised groups.

Given the municipality's refusal to follow its own directives and policies, marginalised citizens have become the primary actors on the planning stage. Their actions and attitudes were examined to answer the following question: What is the contribution of the public (particularly women) to the unofficial urban planning process? The search for answers to this question led to a critical rethinking of North American feminist theory in Canadian communities, and a consideration of the utility and character of the public participation in which the city's citizen planners have involved themselves.