The Right to the City and the Problem of Accessibility: A New Look on Brazilian Cities

Abstract

This scientific article aims to discuss the issue of intra-urban spatial accessibility in Brazilian cities and how its promotion is implicit in the concept of "right to the city", addressing the importance of social control in the design of accessible cities. In order to accomplish the classical definitions of "right to the city" given by the authors Lefebvre (2001) and Harvey (2012) have been used; the objective definition of accessibility proposed by Garcia (2012), Lippo (2005) and Cambiaghi (2012); and Gehl (2010) concept correlative to accessibility "human dimension". Regarding the method used, this research was descriptive, with a purely qualitative approach, where as technical procedure were performed from literature surveys to documentary surveys, about the cited concepts and legal aspects inherent to this theme. The research results showed that, although Brazil has a wide legislation that deals with the accessibility and instrumentalization of social control, in favor of creating of accessible cities, Brazilian cities have a large deficit of accessibility, both in their public spatialities and in their structures and aspects of urban mobility. Therefore, It was concluded that given the aging population projections made by the IBGE for until half of 21 century, as well as the rapid growth of the population of individuals with physical disabilities in the country, and the strong relationship between aging and incidence of disability, due to problems of accessibility observed in the Brazilian cities, emerges the need to think cities considering the inclusion of these citizens in urban life, through the promotion of universal accessibility, i.e. the need for a new look at the cities.