The ‘Distributed governance: The management of unruly spaces in São Paulo’ project is supported by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship grant, awarded to Dr Matthew Richmond (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, LACC), and based at LACC. It aims to contribute to contemporary debates about urban governance, inequality, violence, and citizenship in Latin America and the Global South.
The project will develop the concept of ‘distributed governance’ to examine how urban space, people and activities are managed in Luz/República and São Mateus in São Paulo, Brazil. Distributed governance refers to complex, multi-sided and continually negotiated arrangements between diverse actors from the state, the private sector, civil society and organised crime.
It will investigate how governance is “distributed” between diverse actors, scrutinise how the variable of urban centrality vs peripherality shapes governance configurations, examine the consequences of distributed urban governance for different populations, and assess the influence of the current political conjuncture on urban governance.
The project has four main research objectives:
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To investigate how governance is “distributed” between diverse actors.
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To scrutinise how the variable of urban centrality vs peripherality shapes governance configurations.
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To examine the consequences of distributed urban governance for different populations.
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To assess the influence of the current political conjuncture on urban governance.
The cases are:
The research participants will be divided into three main groups and each engaged using different approaches and methods:
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“Institutionalised” governance actors
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“Non-institutionalised” governance actors
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Residents and other regular users
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Three peer-reviewed articles, presenting empirical findings from the research and outlining the notion of distributed governance and its theoretical contribution
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An edited book on ‘Distributed Urban Governance in Latin America’, presenting the concept in depth and including relevant contributions from scholars working across the region
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Organised seminars in London and São Paulo
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Presentations/panels at three major international conferences
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Organised seminars in London and São Paulo
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Presentations/panels at three major international conferences
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A workshop with civil society organisations in São Paulo, allowing them to discuss and feed into the research findings
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A participatory event with NGOS in São Paulo to present results and receive feedback (end of second year)
Photo credit: São Paulo megacity, Joelle Hernandez, 2007, Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.