Pacto Alegre: contradictions in smart city proposals for Porto Alegre

Abstract

Based on a critical perspective of city management, this article analyzes how the smart city concept, used within the scope of the Pacto Alegre program in the city of Porto Alegre, state of Rio Grande do Sul, has aligned with and shaped intervention actions in the city in favor of market logic. In addition, based on an analysis of documents and in-depth interviews, the article examines the program's contradictions and the reductionist nature of the use of concepts such as sustainability and citizenship. The data revealed that the program is biased towards the interests of the dominant classes, especially the business elite, and its actions are disconnected from the real problems of the city but strongly aligned with the globalizing discourse of privatization of urban activities.

Keywords:
city; smart city; citizenship; urban management; Porto Alegre

Resumo

Este artigo, pautado em uma perspectiva crítica de gestão das cidades, analisa como a ideia de cidade inteligente/smart city, utilizada no âmbito do programa Pacto Alegre, em Porto Alegre/RS, tem se alinhado e moldado as ações de intervenção na cidade em favor da lógica de mercado. Além disso, a partir de análise de documentos e de entrevistas em profundidade, analisa as contradições do programa, bem como o caráter reducionista no emprego de conceitos como sustentabilidade e cidadania. Os dados revelaram que o programa tem um viés voltado aos interesses das classes dominantes, com destaque para a classe empresarial, e as ações estão desconectadas dos reais problemas da cidade, mas fortemente alinhadas ao discurso globalizante de privatização das atividades urbanas.

Palavras-chave:
cidade; cidade inteligente; cidadania; gestão urbana; Porto Alegre

Introduction

Large Brazilian cities are characterised by high rates of violence, urban mobility problems, public insecurity, pollution, housing problems, and unemployment, which translates into high rates of socio-spatial segregation and urban exclusion (Gordilho Souza, 2018).

The first quarter of 2023 registered an unemployment rate of 8.8% in Brazil (IBGE, 2023). In the city of Rio de Janeiro, almost 20% of the population lives in substandard housing (Fundação João Pinheiro, 2023), and militias already control 57.5% of the city's territory, while factions linked to drug trafficking, such as Comando Vermelho, Terceiro Comando, and Amigos dos Amigos, control 34.2% of the city's neighbourhoods (Gini, 2022). Porto Alegre, capital city of the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), despite having a Human Development Index (HDI) above the national average, is the city with the greatest inequality between black and white people in Brazil. While the Municipal Human Development Index (MHDI) for the black population in the state capital city is 0.705, that of the white population is 0.833, representing a difference of 18.2%. The national average difference is 14.43% (UNDP, Ipea and FJP, 2017).

Also resulting from urban and environmental problems, epidemics (dengue, chikungunya, Zika, etc.) have become increasingly frequent, mainly affecting low- -income populations. Brazil leads the ranking of dengue cases, with 2.3 million occurrences of the disease, totalling 769 deaths in 2023 (UN, 2023). Covid-19 highlighted the impact of inequality and urbanisation conditions on the health of the most disadvantaged social groups.

In this sense, considering the impact of urbanisation problems on living conditions in society, cities are becoming increasingly relevant as a field of research and focus for international organisations such as the United Nations. However, it is not appropriate to think of inequality in cities as unrelated to the context of dependency. Thus, Morozov and Bria (2018, p. 14) highlight that:

Despite the incessant celebration of cities as the most important actors in our global system, with celebrity mayors rising to rule the world (and soon, perhaps, the universe), the reality looks quite different. After all, contemporary cities are not isolated entities, and much of what occurs in them is still very much determined by transformations at the national and global level.

This article recognises the relationship of dependency and the trajectory of capitalist development in Latin America as relevant factors for understanding the dynamics of cities and their problems. It also assumes, based on Harvey (2006), the need to pay attention to the risk of the reification of cities and the dominant discourse that considers the urban process as independent from political and economic development.

Therefore, we propose a critical reflection on the limits of the dominant idea of the smart city for our context, especially when solutions are imported from cities of developed countries into the reality of cities in developing countries. Furthermore, as highlighted by Irazábal and Jirón (2021), smart city project initiatives in Latin America have been characterised by top-down approaches in areas of interest to the elites, fundamentally benefiting them by using public resources.

Initiatives linked to smart city ideas in Brazil tend to align with a neoliberal conception of the city, a commodity city, consistent with the concept of urban entrepreneurship (Harvey, 2006; Hollands, 2015; Reia and Cruz, 2023). Furthermore, debates on smart cities — many of which promoted by private companies that sell products/services to public administrations, and supported/financed by public administrations — tend to focus the discussion on technological solutions that are disconnected from the real problems affecting the social strata that suffer most from urban problems. Wiig (2016) reveals a rhetoric surrounding the idea of the smart city, in which digital transformation efforts are much more focused on selling a city in the global economy rather than on addressing solutions to the problems of urban inequality. The author also shows that, influenced by companies such as IBM, managers have incorporated techno--utopian smart city policies that disregard the spatial character and material geography of urban problems, which are necessary to overcome the legacy of urban decline.

These agendas have also been characterised by highly asymmetrical power relations between State and non-State actors, as well as by strong conflicts of interest, particularly regarding the actions of Big Tech companies in developing countries (Avila, 2020; Reia and Cruz, 2023). In this vein, Vanolo (2014) draws attention to the use of smart cities as a disciplinary strategy, imposing a new moral order on cities and defining technical parameters of order to distinguish between good cities and bad cities.

Mora, Bolici and Deakin (2017), when referring to cities as complex and highly organised systems, highlight the need to manage the difficult scenario faced by cities based on the connection of many academic disciplines, bringing them into a single field of urban studies. Recently, the debate on cities has entered the field of organisational studies and administration, with particular attention to environmental issues. Researchers from the management field of administration have neglected the political dimension that permeates this debate, mainstreaming the idea of the city as a commodity (Dameri and Rosenthal-Sabroux, 2014; Riva and Pilotti, 2023). Within the field of organisational studies, in a more critical dimension, different perspectives are presented, such as the humanistic and historical materialist views (Joss, Cook and Dayot, 2017; Saraiva, 2019). These studies reveal the effects of urban transformations on different social segments to meet market demands or to increasingly adapt to the process of capitalist accumulation. Such approaches are not new, and reference should be made to the works of authors such as Lefebvre (2008), Harvey (2006), and Brenner and Theodore (2002).

The empirical context of this research is the city of Porto Alegre, capital city of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, which has increasingly embraced the discourse of innovation, as well as adhered to and developed ideas of a smart city. The focus of the study is the Pacto Alegre programme and initiatives linked to the ideas of a smart city.

The smart city projects and proposals for Porto Alegre are interconnected by proposals for innovation in the city, aligned with the Pacto Alegre programme, which was developed by the Alliance for Innovation programme. In this context, innovation has become the link to leverage discussions about smart cities, characterised, on the one hand, by a strong alignment with the business sector and, on the other, by selective engagement from civil society, excluding social movements and broader social participation.

Cities and “smart” cities

Dameri (2017) presents smart cities as a recent phenomenon that is rapidly spreading across all continents. However, she points out that the idea has its roots in an article written in 1993, which describes investments in telecommunications in Singapore and the contribution of information to GDP growth, defining this city as a ‘smart city’. Mora, Bolici and Deakin (2017) argue that the smart city was established as a scientific object in 1992, in Gibson, Kozmetky and Smilor (1992)’s book The technopolis phenomenon smart cities, fast systems, global networks.

Taking up Pollitt and Hupe's (2011) idea of magical concepts and referring to the concept presented by Dameri (2017), smart cities have been uncritically accepted as a vibrant and innovative urbanisation strategy, conceived as an effective tool capable of addressing the problems arising from growing urbanisation in large and medium-sized cities around the world, that is, a new urban panacea, in the terms used by Hollands (2015). As Vanolo (2014) points out, smart cities have been commonly taken as a generic and optimistic concept for the city of the future.

For Dameri (2017), the idea of a smart city consists of a strategy to encompass modern urban production factors within a common framework, with an emphasis on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). According to the author, the idea is embraced by local governments, businesses, non-profit organisations, and citizens, by highlighting the objectives of improving living conditions and safeguarding the environment. However, the author underlines that, although this concept seems well known and applied by academics and non-academics, its contents and boundaries remain unclear.

Considering the diversity and lack of conceptual agreement, Dameri (2017) argues that the empirical implementation of smart cities also shows great heterogeneity, encompassing all aspects of urban life, such as tourism, commerce, industry, agriculture, logistics, research, and education. According to the author, a powerful information and communication infrastructure should support knowledge management in the urban context and the sustainability of cities, thereby positively affecting water, energy, and mobility.

Perhaps due to the author's perspective or the predominance of smart city initiatives in developed countries, Dameri (2017) argues that implementation has originated as a bottom-up phenomenon, in which various independent actors initiate smart activities by using some public infrastructure or technological solutions. Solution vendors and government officials offering digital platforms come into play at this point. However, Mendes (2020) points out that the most successful smart cities experiences that are focused on the population have occurred in cities in more developed countries, where lower levels of socioeconomic inequality allow for greater digital inclusion, thus enabling greater citizen participation.

Angelidou (2017) analysed 15 cities around the world and highlighted the intense role of ICT use in improving the functionality of urban systems and advancing knowledge transfer and innovation networks. However, the study showed that most smart city strategies fail in their ability or intention to incorporate bottom-up approaches; they are poorly adapted to accommodate local needs and disregard aspects of privacy and information security. Such interventions have more often than not functioned as an ‘urban placebo,’ creating a fictitious view of the effectiveness of interventions to improve the city's image in the global world, yet being ineffective in addressing the city's real problems (Jirón et al., 2021).

Considering the importance of analysing the discourse and practice of actors who defend the idea of smart cities, Angelidou's (2017) findings are relevant. According to the author, although mainstream articles highlight the scope of citizen participation and civic innovation as well as the fact that stakeholders are gradually being considered more as agents of change than mere collaborators, this does not seem to be implemented, and the empowerment of citizens and their well-being have played a secondary role.

Dameri's (2017) notions of smart cities, although drawing attention to conceptual diversity and disagreements about the concept, fail to address the political dimension. Morozov and Bria (2018), on the other hand, present a political counterpoint to the debate on smart cities. They explain that smart cities follow Richard Florida's celebration of creative cities, becoming a brand that indicates intelligent use of resources and attracts money, corporate power, and private industries. Issues such as participation, sustainability, and social justice tend to be sidelined or used only as a marketing tool. This political-economic – rather than purely technical – view highlights the need to understand smart cities in the context of neoliberalism, by creating a notion of the need for cities to be competitive in an era of political austerity, thus handing over the management of public infrastructure and services to private companies.

Morozov and Bria (2018) argue that smart cities have become prominent among “smart” concepts, capturing the public imagination in recent decades and having significant political impacts by informing and shaping the work of urban planners, architects, urban infrastructure operators, as well as the work of mayors and entire service industries. Along with the aforementioned authors, Grossi and Pianezzi (2017) criticise the promotion of smart cities, defining them as an expression of neoliberal ideology. For the authors, this utopia, which generates a collective imaginary, actually seeks to promote the interests of business elites and divert attention from the urgent problems of cities. Referencing Brenner and Theodore (2002), they also point out that, by analysing smart cities as an expression of a neoliberal restructuring process focused on the urban space market, utopia promotes:

The diffusion of new models of local governance based upon privatization and public–private partnerships, the exposure of municipalities to global competition, and the mobilization of an entrepreneurial ethos and discourse are among the most important traits of this “neoliberalization” process. (Ibid., p. 353)

Greenfield (2013) points out that the proximity of smart city archetypes to neoliberal concepts leads managers to develop public policies that lack a robust conception of the public sphere, boosting opportunities for companies such as IBM, Cisco, and Siemens, but to the detriment of the public interest.

Morozov and Bria (2018) give voice to critics who have attacked the utopian vision behind the smart city. They highlight its unrealistic abstractions, lack of connection to real-world problems and real people, who question the technology employed to dominate our urban existence and an almost pornographic obsession with subservience and control. Moreover, they emphasise the inability to think of ways to put citizens – rather than corporations or urban planners – at the centre of the development process. Despite the importance of these criticisms, the authors point out that they fail to link the dynamics of the city and its problems to the process of capitalist accumulation.

Morozov and Bria (2018) explain that researchers who have traced the genealogy of the term have pointed out that its origins (as well as its phenomenal global reception) are linked to the reorientation of large firms, such as IBM, away from their traditional hardware and software business models towards selling services, including consulting. The public sector is now seen as a large market. Avila (2020) shows how dominant countries within a global system take advantage of poor and developing countries through digitalisation as a new form of colonialism.

In conclusion, one may argue that the dominant concept of smart cities, both in literature and in empirical experiences around the world, bears significant similarities to what Harvey (2006) referred to as urban entrepreneurship. The author highlights three important issues regarding the new urban entrepreneurship: a) the notion of public- -private partnership, in which traditional local entrepreneurs integrate with local government, seeking and attracting external sources of financing, direct investments, and new jobs; b) public-private activity is entrepreneurial, since its execution and design carry the risk of investment associated with speculative development; however, in general, the public sector bears the investment risk, and the private sector reaps the benefits; c) in general, entrepreneurship focuses much more on the political economy rather than on the territory, that is, there is less concern with issues of public education and housing and more with the creation of industrial parks and revitalisation to attract tourists or enable more attractive conditions for consumption.

Harvey (2006) highlights some basic options related to urban entrepreneurship, which are central to understanding the rapid changes in the unequal development of urban systems in the advanced capitalist world. It should be noted that such changes are now present, albeit with certain specificities, in the developing world. The first option consists of competition within the international division of labour, which involves creating specific advantages for producing goods and services. While some advantages derive from location or resource base, others are created through public and private investment to strengthen the economic base of metropolitan regions. This process is unlikely to occur without strong public subsidies for private initiatives, assuming the investment risk to ensure the security of private capital. The second option involves strategies to increase participation in the spatial division of consumption, even in the face of recessions affecting large segments of the local population. Thus, this involves projects to enhance degraded urban areas, the construction of shopping centres, stadiums, convention centres and marinas, among other urban interventions to accommodate private enterprises in public structures. Thirdly, Harvey (2006, p. 177) adds that:

[...] entrepreneurship was greatly influenced by the fierce struggle to obtain control and command activities related to high finance, government, information gathering and processing (including the media).

Methodological procedures

Drawing on the work of Joss, Cook and Dayot (2017) and Joss et al. (2019), we sought to analyse the body of texts produced by the actors involved in coordinating the Pacto Alegre programme, aiming to triangulate with interviews, newspaper articles, and other materials. In this way, we sought to investigate the key dimensions of the discourse of those who propagate the ideas of the Pacto Alegre programme, how they are interrelated, and what the critical moments or points of rupture are. The textual analysis also seeks to elucidate the concept of citizenship behind the project and the ideas of a smart city, whether it contemplates a broader perspective or reduces it to the concept of customer (individual consumer of services who expresses only self-interested behaviour).

In order to conduct this debate, we also focused the analysis on documents, projects, and articles related to these programmes, seeking to explore and explain the concept of the city that permeates the agenda of the main forums, workshops, and documents publicly presented by the main actors. The study was based on primary and secondary data and, by drawing on the categories articulated in the literature review, we took an interpretative and critical approach to the documents accessed, such as the Mapping of Innovation Ecosystems (Zen et al., 2019), texts published on the Pacto Alegre homepage, and interviews with its members, which are publicly available on YouTube. Interviews were conducted with civil servants who held positions of confidence in the Mayor’s Office, with a representative of the Pacto Alegre, who also heads a department of the Porto Alegre city government, as well as with municipal legislators who participated in debates on city transformations and funding for projects related to innovation in the city.

Informal conversations were also held with researchers specialising in urban planning who have been following the disputes over city projects in Porto Alegre. Based on a qualitative analysis, we sought to highlight the contradictions between what was expressed in the documents and what has actually been developed, as well as the inconsistencies between the discourse present in the documents of programmes such as the Pacto Alegre and the Alliance for Innovation besides the political actions developed by the city council.

Porto Alegre – contradictions of the ‘developed South’

Porto Alegre had an estimated population of 1,332,570 inhabitants in 2022 (IBGE, 2023). Despite being one of the Brazilian capital cities with the lowest levels of social inequality, part of its population lacks water supply (0.65%/9,161 people), adequate sewage systems (6.1%/85,970 people), access to public lighting in their private homes (6.2%/87,380 people), paving (12.1%/170,531 people), and sidewalks (23%/324,151 people). In addition to these problems, the figures provided by the Porto Alegre City Observatory (ObservaPOA) regarding the population of Porto Alegre living in risk areas are significant, with the widespread presence of substandard housing, an increase in the number of homeless people, a decline in the availability and quality of public transport, and an increase in urban violence. Added to this picture is the news of a reduction of approximately R$32 million in public funds for social assistance since 2016, with a drop of R$15.7 million in 2019 alone. (Bueller, 2020). Undoubtedly, in view of the problems posed, it is necessary to consider the approaches to the debate on initiatives to make Porto Alegre a smart city and a benchmark for innovation. In this sense, the question arises: smart for whom? Smart at what cost?

From Technopoles to Pacto Alegre

The creation of the Alliance for Innovation and the Pacto Alegre programmes is part of a broader context that began in the 1990s, based on public policies initiated by the municipal government of Porto Alegre and the state government of Rio Grande do Sul. Among these initiatives are the “Technological Innovation Hubs,” a programme created by the Rio Grande do Sul Department of Science and Technology, whose main purpose was to increase the competitivity of the productive sectors of the state, as well as to promote diversification of production by supporting the development of innovative technologies that could be applied to various sectors. Another reference for current programmes is the PAT, created in the 1990s and inspired by French technopoles.

The programme was implemented in 1989 (Jung, ten Caten and Ribeiro, 2007) and, upon reaching its third phase in the early 2000s, scientific hubs began to emerge in Porto Alegre and its metropolitan area. Starting with the São Leopoldo IT Hub in 2002, this region became a centre for the development of activities related to technological development. The following year, Tecnopuc (Science and Technology Park of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul/PUCRS) was created in Porto Alegre, with support from the Brazilian Innovation Agency (Finep) and the

Minstry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), among other federal and regional agencies, such as Sebrae, the Rio Grande do Sul Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation (SCTI) now the Secretariat of Economic Development, Science and Technology – and the city hall of Porto Alegre (Audy; Knebel, 2015, p. 89)

In 2009, the São Leopoldo Technological Park (Tecnosinos) was built in partnership with the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos) in the metropolitan region. The establishment of technology hubs, which later became nationally recognised, also sparked the birth of Zenit (Scientific and Technological Park of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul/UFRGS) in Porto Alegre, the Feevale University Technological Park in Campo Bom, and several incubators and coworking spaces.

Throughout this period, incubators and coworking spaces proliferated in the capital city as well, both at UFRGS (Centre for Informatics Entrepreneurship, HESTIA, Business Incubator of the Biotechnology Centre), at other universities (RAIAR at PUCRS, Base at the Higher School of Advertising and Marketing, etc.), in municipal government initiatives (Technological Business Incubator and POA.HUB), and with private enterprises (Nós, Flowork, UFO, Área 51, etc.) (Pacto Alegre, 2019).

The pioneering initiatives in terms of innovation in the 1990s, with democratically oriented governments, were concerned with bringing together representatives of businesses, universities, trade unions and organised civil society, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and social movements, of various kinds. It was also considered essential that the development of innovation, co- -ordinated and controlled by the state, should serve economic and social development to improve the quality of employment in the region and to contribute to the production of solutions that would make the city of Porto Alegre and the state of Rio Grande do Sul less unequal and more sustainable. Linked to participatory budgeting, a model that has become an international benchmark, the civic dimension has taken precedence over the economic dimension (RS GOVERN, 2016). This scenario changed with the arrival of neoliberal-oriented governments, which favoured a perspective more aligned with urban entrepreneurship, with solutions based on privatisation, public-private partnerships as well as a focus on attracting foreign investment through direct and indirect subsidies.

Despite the evident presence of the state, both in coordinating and orchestrating initiatives and in financing projects, recent texts from the Pacto Alegre and the Alliance for Innovation programme give more prominence to the influence of private enterprises in the way the city is conceived (Pacto Alegre, 2019). At this moment of celebration of private initiative, a movement led by businesspeople – Cite – emerged in Porto Alegre in the early 2010s. The project aimed to transform Porto Alegre into an attractive city for international capital investment in technological innovation (ibid.). At this point, it is clear how the movement initiated by businesspeople attracted not only other businesspeople and members of the capital's economic elite, but also people linked to academia (Renner, 2013).

During its early years, Cite proved capable of gaining support for its cause, but lost momentum. What remained was the connection between the actors involved, who would later work on similar projects with public funding. Despite this initiative by entrepreneurs, much of what was developed in the early 2010s was attributable to the public programme called Gabinete de Inovação e Tecnologia Inovapoa/GP (Inovapoa/GP Office of Innovation and Technology). Created by Law n. 10,705/2009 and sanctioned by Decree n. 16,369/2009 (Porto Alegre, 2019a, 2019b), Inovapoa/GP is an agency under the Mayor's Office responsible for coordinating and implementing public policies to promote innovation as well as scientific and technological development.

Article 2 of Law n. 10,705 demonstrates how, since its inception, the agency would prioritise private activities for the development of innovation in the city. Almost half of the basic objectives of Inovapoa/GP involve promoting incentives and a welcoming environment for companies to establish themselves in Porto Alegre and promote their own technological development processes.

Most of Inovapoa/GP's actions during its early years (Dias, 2015) involved participation, support, and organisation of events and lectures, with few actual deliveries of products, agreements, or project development (whether social or legal). The publication of documents from that period is also a point to be analysed. According to Dias (2015), in 2013 and 2014, only two documents were published: the article entitled ‘Portal E-Guia ICT Porto Alegre’ and the Porto Alegre Guide to Business and Opportunities.

Inovapoa/GP was a milestone in the creation of a mindset focused on neoliberal technological development, calling on private companies to take the lead in innovation- -oriented actions in the capital city of Rio Grande do Sul. Other institutions, such as UFRGS, PUCRS, and Unisinos, also began to create innovation development centres, perceiving the moment as favourable. After almost a decade of building this scenario, the joining of groups with similar ideals, formed during this period, resulted in the earliest efforts that would culminate in Pacto Alegre, the advent of the Alliance for Innovation programme being the most significant of these.

The Alliance for Innovation programme was formed by the union of the three largest universities in Porto Alegre and its metropolitan region (UFRGS, PUCRS, and Unisinos), committed to developing the city as a talent hub in Brazil. The alliance aims to "[...] collaborate to convert knowledge into development" and has a vision for the future: "[...] by 2025, to be internationally recognized as a benchmark model for high-impact collaboration and innovation" (Allianc, 2018).

On 4 July 2018, negotiations began. They would result in the Pacto Alegre programme. At an event held by the Alliance's partner universities, visions for the future of the capital city were discussed. With the participation of Josep Piqué, ‘one of the creators of the Barcelona @22 Project, which transformed the city into a global benchmark for smart cities’ (ibid.), a marathon of workshops and meetings began to assess Porto Alegre.

On 21 November 2018, a ceremony was held to formally launch Pacto Alegre with the official signing of the Innovation Pact for the capital city of Rio Grande do Sul. At the event, the Mapping of Porto Alegre's Innovation Ecosystem (Zen et al., 2019) was presented, a report structured in five dimensions (Talent and Knowledge, Financial, Structural, Institutional-Legal, and Interaction and Quality of Life) in order to analyse the city's innovation ecosystem.

The mapping of Porto Alegre's innovation ecosystem, central to defining the development guidelines for Pacto Alegre, was carried out throughout 2018, based on statistical data and thematic workshops with 135 participants linked to the government, universities, companies, and civil society. Around 40% of the participants were representatives of the municipal executive or legislative branches; 22% were linked to educational institutions, most of which were private; 17% were representatives of private companies, and 8%, of social organisations such as the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae) and the National Industrial Learning Service (Senai); the remainder were representatives of business associations (Federation of Industries of the State of Rio Grande do Sul and Federation of Business Entities of Rio Grande do Sul), representatives of technological parks, and professional associations. There was a notable absence of representatives from the working class, community or neighbourhood associations, and social movements.

Considering the subject of the debate, it is also worth noting the lack of participation from environmental groups, from the Rio Grande do Sul Institute of Architecture and Urbanism (IAB--RS), and from organisations linked to culture and historical heritage. In an interview posted on YouTube, the coordinator of Pacto Alegre, when questioned and confronted by another member of the programme, acknowledges the lack of diversity (referring only to the absence of black people at the Pacto Alegre’s meetings and events). He adds that ‘this issue needs to be worked on’ (Cabanellos Advocacia, 2022). This representative of Pacto Alegre explains, in an interview, that the absence of social movements and groups that demand the right to the city in the programme's activities is a conscious choice, as he believes that this exclusion is necessary to achieve consensus or to avoid polarisation of issues. He explains the lack of diversity as natural, given that this is how society is structured.

In this mapping of the innovation ecosystem, recommendations were made for each thematic workshop (Zen et al., 2019). We will highlight those that are aligned with the concept of urban entrepreneurship and that guide the concept of innovation and smart cities for cities from a neoliberal perspective, as well as actions that contradict the policies adopted by the municipal government, which will be presented later

Since the creation of Pacto Alegre, the activities of the Alliance for Innovation programme have been carried out within this larger project. On 26 March 2019, the Pacto Alegre committee was formed (Pacto Alegre, 2019), consolidating the active participation of private sector actors in decision-making regarding the city's constitution.

The Pacto Alegre programme, originating from an initiative by the Porto Alegre city government together with university and business groups, aimed to overcome six macro challenges: talent, urban transformation, business environments, city image, quality of life, and modernisation of public administration. The projects in the first phase of Pacto Alegre were organised around these macro challenges (Valduga, 2019). The city image macro challenge included POA 2020, POA Routes, and POA Branding (Place Branding); the modernisation of public administration, Single Citizen, Start.Gov, and Transparent City; the education and talent, Innovative Teacher and POA Innovation Olympics; the urban transformation, Hands On 4D, Cultural Interventions Painting POA, and Citizen Culture I Love POA; the business environment, Innovation Blitz, POA Express Licensing, Conecta POA Trinova, POA Crowdfunding, among others; finally, the last one, quality of life, included four projects: Mexe com POA (from the centre to the periphery), WOnd3r Água Maravilhosa, Smart City Todas Gerações, and Engaja POA (Open City).

Chart 1
– Highlights and contradictions regarding the thematic axes and recommendations resulting from the workshops for mapping the innovation ecosystems of Porto Alegre

Thematic axis and recommendations	Highlights and contradictions
Talent and Knowledge 1) Align talent development strategies from primary to higher education, with a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation. 2) Disseminate knowledge about intellectual property and business models to researchers and entrepreneurs.	Focus on entrepreneurship and no reference to citizenship education. No recommendation on improving working conditions for public school teachers or investing in basic educational infrastructure. A setback in relation to the Escola Cidadã (Citizen School) project, which put Porto Alegre in the spotlight in the field of public education.
Financial Capital 1) Train and attract angel investors for the initial stages of innovative ventures. 2) Promote innovative businesses in the city to attract investors. 3) Develop and support programmes to bring start-ups and large companies together. 4) Expand the dissemination of information about the process of starting new businesses.	No reference to microcredit programmes for developing initiatives in the suburbs or supporting solidarity economy businesses. It should be noted that Porto Alegre was once a benchmark for solidarity microcredit programmes.
Infrastructure for Innovation 1) Develop new options and improve the quality of public transport. 2) Improve data and telecommunications infrastructure. 3) Inform the population about the options and frequency of existing public transport. 4) Develop long-term municipal planning in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship. 5) Improve integration between public and private entities to solve infrastructure problems.	The current municipal government has financed private public transport companies and initiated the privatisation process of the public company Carris, which has always been recognised for the quality of public transport it offers and its working conditions. There has been no statement or action by Pacto Alegre regarding the maintenance and improvement of public transport. It should be noted that Uber participated in the mapping of Innovation Ecosystems carried out by Pacto Alegre, but no representative of public transport did. Furthermore, contrary to even the mainstream smart city approach, the municipal government (headed by the Innovation Office, the coordinator of Pacto Alegre) attempted to privatise Procempa, a public technology company that plays a prominent role in the development of technological solutions for different areas of government.
Institutions and Legislation 1) Centralise entrepreneur support activities in a single location through partnerships with the state government, city government and other entities such as SEBRAE and Endeavor. 2) Simplify and publicise the process of opening and closing businesses. 3) Organise a collective agenda for events and training in the area of entrepreneurship and innovation. 4) Publicise initiatives to strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship in order to increase public engagement and demand for continuity. 5) Promote a communication campaign about the city’s attractions for investors and entrepreneurs.	Focus on investors and deregulation of rules for opening new businesses. Such measures tend to favour actions and practices that are inconsistent with safety, environmental protection, and care for the city’s historical heritage. There is no reference to the promotion of measures to create private sector counterparts in terms of social and environmental policies and combating urban inequality. The counterparts of urban interventions in the city by large developers tend to focus on measures that favour the appreciation of the investment itself rather than the real needs of the population.
Interaction and Quality of Life 1) Promote more cultural and social activities in public spaces. 2) Revitalise public spaces, possibly through shared initiatives and the mobilisation of public-private partnerships. 3) Support and publicise civil society actions,spaces, and environments for innovation and entrepreneurship. 4) Encourage social businesses, identify,leverage local talent, and strengthen the local economy of low-income communities. 5) Attract large infrastructure projects as a strategy for revitalising degraded areas.	Quality of life focused on attracting large revitalisation projects, public-private partnerships, and support for innovation and entrepreneurship environments. No reference to combating social inequality, social housing and living conditions in the suburbs. LUPs are presented as alternatives for urban intervention, disregarding the impact on the social fabric of the territories. In debates on the city’s largest LUP, the revitalisation of Cais Mauá, and interventions in the 4th District, the dialogue is focused on the business sector and not on cultural collectives and social movements in defence of the right to the city.

In addition to these, there are five proposals put forward by the executive coordination of Pacto Alegre to improve public management: the development of Strategic Projects, the Caldeira Project, the Transformative Education Project, the Master Plan, the Digital Health Project, and the MBA in Innovation. At the time of drafting this article, Pacto Alegre began its fourth cycle, totalling 39 projects. Of these, nine have been delivered, one has been abandoned, 11 are pending, 12 are under development, and six new strategic projects have been presented (Pacto Alegre, 2020).

In a report presented at the 3rd Meeting of the Pacto Alegre Board (2019), one could verify the stages of development of each of the programme’s projects, with information on the progress already made, risks for the future, actions to be carried out in 2020, and suggestions for referrals made by the Board. The report outlines the Pacto Alegre’s priorities based on the analysis of certain data, as will be shown next.

The projects that are at the same stage of development during the first cycle of Pacto Alegre are those related to the city image macro challenge. According to the opinion of the Pacto Alegre’s coordination, all of them have a ‘very positive perspective’ and one may expect that they will remain so in the second project agenda. At the time of the meeting, the POA Routes project already had a pilot project, events held, partnerships structured, and studies being developed on a possible gastronomic route as well as the use of rural roads as another ‘route’. The POA Brand project, in turn, already had 11 brand proposals for Porto Alegre and three brands defined for public consultation. One may interpret the initial focus on projects related to the city image macro challenge as an attempt by the creators of the Pacto Alegre to attract private capital – mainly from abroad – for investing in the city. Instead of strengthening Porto Alegre's image as a benchmark for democracy, with innovations such as Participatory Budgeting and the World Social Forum, the aim is to align it with a neoliberal concept that runs counter to the concept of a city that has produced a better quality of life for its citizens in the past.

Projects related to the modernising public administration, business environment, and urban transformation macro challenges are at an advanced stage of development. In terms of modernising public administration, Start.GOV stands out as a project that has resulted in the training of 40 civil servants in innovation. The course aimed to develop different skills and competencies, addressing topics such as startup culture, agile methods, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, in addition to a section entitled ‘hands-on’, with a view to ideating and preparing innovative prototypes (Porto Alegre, 2019).

At this point, however, a frequent feature in the Pacto Alegre’s reports and other documents is the lack of details about operations. The presentation does not detail neither how nor where this training took place. Nor is there consistent information about the other ‘main deliverables/advances’ achieved, so that the information presented in the topics is incomplete. Even though, the Single Citizen project has been structured, it lacks implementation and coordination by agents ‘to get it off the ground’. Finally, despite issuing an open data decree, Cidade Transparente has not yet implemented any solutions.

The business environment macro- -challenge projects, in turn, are in a very similar situation: their operational structures and partnerships have been defined, etc., but they are still awaiting implementation. The exception is the Express Licensing project, which, despite not being the most advanced in terms of development, according to the evaluation report, is the only one that has begun to achieve its objective based on restructuring licensing operations, adopting digital licensing for low- -impact activities, and integrating the activities of Porto Alegre city government departments. Not surprisingly, this action produces more fluidity for capital actions, minimising environmental or safety ‘obstacles’. Such proposals for flexibility meet the expectations of the business sector but have concerned social and environmental movements due to their potential social and environmental effects.

Regarding the urban transformation macro challenge, the Painting POA and Citizen Culture projects appear in similar situations, in which public acceptance is identified as one of the roadblocks to practical development. Hands On 4D is noted as being at an advanced stage of development in the first cycle of the Pacto Alegre, pointing to improvements in the pilot region, complete streets projects, and living spaces as deliverables. However, once again, there are no details on what these improvements would entail, nor is the pilot region defined, rendering the document incomplete.

Finally, it should be noted that projects from two macro challenges of Pacto Alegre – education and talent and quality of life – have been relegated to second plan. Since the beginning of Pacto Alegre, the education and talent macro challenge has been the one with the fewest proposals to be implemented, having only two projects.

The quality of life macro challenge is the most delayed in terms of development and the only one with a project — ‘Mexe com POA’ (Move with POA) — whose recommended course of action is ‘Suspend. Evaluate the possibility of relaunching in the 3rd Cycle if there is engagement’. The Wond3r project, as well as EngajaPOA, were in an intermediate stage of development until the drafting of the roundtable document, and among its suggestions for referral is ‘Study expansion of focus and consolidation in New Poa Environmental Quality Project’. The last of the projects, ‘Smart City – All Generations’, is noted as being in a precarious stage of development, with the only deliverable, besides defining the initial focus of action, being the ‘SQED and POA partnership on the Street’.

With regard to Pacto Alegre’s strategic projects in general, the document presents a very positive outlook for its members. The Innovation Agents Training project was the fastest of all the projects presented by the Pacto Alegre to achieve its goal, with MBA classes in Innovation Ecosystems starting on 11 July 2019 (Weber, 2018). On the opposite side is the Transformative Education project, for which not even a roadmap has been drawn up and released, thus making it one of the underdeveloped projects. Both the Caldeira Institute and the Digital Health projects have been identified as having very positive prospects. Finally, the Innovative Urban Guidelines project is one of those with the highest number of deliverables and one of the most important for the development of a welcoming environment for other Pacto Alegre projects, as it operates in the sphere of legislative change and architectural studies, among others.

Smart City – “All” generations

This project's value proposition is ‘to stimulate the development of a Smart POA with special attention to children and the elderly.’ The objectives are a) to make Porto Alegre a benchmark in care and relations with children and the elderly; b) to stimulate synergy between public policies developed for children and the elderly; c) to promote user experience practices to revitalise or install new public facilities with accessibility and a playful character (Pacto Alegre, 2023). It should be noted, however, that the discussion on smart cities is not limited to the proposals of Pacto Alegre, but permeates the actions and the discourses of city authorities across different areas, even though there is no concrete plan for this.

In March 2022, the ‘futurologist’ and director of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies Latin America, invited to speak at the Caldeira Institute (connected to Pacto Alegre), addressed megatrends and their impact on the housing of tomorrow and stated that Porto Alegre should expedite its transition to becoming a smart city. In line with liberal discourse, he advocated strategic planning to think about cities and a strong alignment or unification between the public and the private sectors (Weber, 2022).

In 2021, the Porto Alegre city government, through its Innovation Office, supported the Porto Alegre Regional Meeting, an initiative of Necta within the scope of Connected Smart Cities & Mobility. The purpose of the event was to discuss technological initiatives in the capital city of Rio Grande do Sul. In the news report on the event, it is highlighted that, in 2019, Porto Alegre was recognised with the Innovacity Award, granted by the Smart City Business America Institute, for the city's electronic fencing project. In the Connected Smart Cities ranking, Porto Alegre is among the ten smartest cities in Brazil, ranking 3rd in the South Region and 4th in Entrepreneurship.

In February 2022, the city government officially joined the Mastercard City Possible programme, presented on its homepage as a new model for urban innovation, in which a global network of cities, businesses, academics, and communities work together to make the world's cities more inclusive and sustainable (Prefeitura de Porto Alegre, 2022). For the city's Secretary of Administration and Heritage, who represented the city at the event held in Barcelona in 2021, this participation is positive:

The great legacy is that Porto Alegre will become part of the City Possible network. We will sign a global technological memorandum of understanding with Mastercard, at no cost to the municipality, to seek sustainable and inclusive solutions. Successful cases, with the application of innovative solutions already tested and approved in one city, can be implemented in any other member of the global network. (Ibid.)

According to the report on the agreement, it is noteworthy that, among the benefits, the City Possible programme ‘aims’ to enable the municipality to achieve the following objectives: the recognition as a smart city and laboratory for innovation, a leading position in inclusive digital innovation, and the ability to collectively create and develop solutions with local impact (ibid.).

Inspired by the idea of innovation, which permeates the Pacto Alegre and the Alliance for Innovation programmes, the city government has developed activities within existing frameworks to make the city ‘smarter’. In 2023, Procempa, the Information and Communication Technology company of the Porto Alegre City Council, created the Smart Lab to develop and improve technological solutions already developed by the Procempa team, also operating as an integrator of innovative solutions in the market. (Prefeitura de Porto Alegre, 2023). One of the objectives is to contribute to the ‘customer’ and the citizen, acting as a hub for innovative solutions, that are both incremental and disruptive.

The smart city initiatives in Porto Alegre exemplify what Joss et al. (2019) highlight as the discursive nature of the phenomenon, which has come to shape concepts and programmes. This discourse is also a key means by which ideas and practices are borrowed, transmitted and reproduced in different geographical, cultural and institutional spaces. This new discursive regime, observed in the actions disseminated by Pacto Alegre, is aligned with a neoliberal urban policy based on the corporatisation of city management and the generation of new forms of technocratic governance. Such practices represent a rupture with the democratic-popular practices in the administration of Porto Alegre, which has as one of its references the participatory budget, the Escola Cidadã (Citizen School) programme, among others. In addition, the concept of smart city and innovation in the Pacto Alegre programme is predominantly shaped by the logic of the private sector and serves as a platform for the city’s economic renewal.

Concurrently with initiatives for innovation and smart city actions, in which harmony seems to exist among the last two municipal administrations and certain segments of the three universities, one may cite some actions by the Porto Alegre city government that reveal contradictions with issues of quality of life and the environment, public transparency, urban mobility, and the proposals of the aforementioned programme. Drawing attention to these aspects is essential, as it indicates contradictions even with mainstream proposals in terms of smart cities. Among these measures are:

a) the creation of an innovation fund without a broad discussion on the origin of the resources and without a debate on its application criteria, especially at a time when there are allegations of a lack of resources to meet operating expenses or for investment, with the instalment payment of municipal civil servants' salaries, in addition to cuts in funding for social programmes;

b) approval by the City Council, with the support of the mayor, of a bill authorising the concession to the private sector for the administration and maintenance of squares and parks for 35 years. This concession authorises the use and exploitation of the equipment in these squares and parks, including the transformation of part of these spaces into paid parking lots (reducing soil permeability). It will also allow for fencing and charging admission fees, leaving it up to the private sector to decide whether to allow various activities, which will tend to affect mainly those of a popular nature with lower returns for the companies responsible for the squares and parks. Interventions underway by private companies that have already taken over city parks indicate practices of removing native flora, with a strong impact on the environment, and one of the projects in the largest park in Porto Alegre has been suspended by the courts (Sul21, 2023);

c) offering the management and operation of emergency care facilities (built and equipped with public funds) to the private sector;

d) privatisation of Cia. Carris Porto Alegrense, a public transport company with a proven track record for the quality of its service, which, due to mismanagement and poor maintenance, began to experience cash flow problems. The winning bidder will take over all of Carris's assets and shares and the right to operate its 20 lines for 20 years, representing 22% of Porto Alegre's public transport system. It should be noted that the public company has always provided a higher quality of public transport than that offered by private companies;

d) study for the privatisation or concession of the Municipal Public Market. In addition to commercial activities, including small traders of fruit, vegetables and handicrafts, among others, the Municipal Public Market is a space of unique cultural importance, with incalculable symbolic value for the Afro-descendant community. It is a place for meetings, diverse experiences, and the preservation of the city's cultural identity. In addition, it is a space for small local businesses, with typical regional products that are also part of the intangible heritage.

The aforementioned actions stand in contrast to the idea of improving urban mobility, as they imply the dismantling of public transport, a loss of quality of life – since interventions in parks reduce the population's access to these spaces and have a negative impact on the environment, with the destruction of native flora and fauna –, the withdrawal of resources from social programmes – with implications for the provision of services to disadvantaged populations –, urban interventions that have led to real estate speculation and the consequent gentrification of neighbourhoods close to the city centre that are home to the most disadvantaged social groups, the implementation of measures to use advanced technologies in education – without accompanying measures to value teachers and invest in basic infrastructure in municipal public schools.

A report produced by the State Court of Auditors for the period 2017-2022 highlighted problems in the provision of places, in terms of teacher training and salaries, school meals, teacher/pupil ratios, and the availability of teaching equipment, both in the state school system and in the network of affiliated schools. In August 2023, the chair of the Education Committee of the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul drew attention to the fact that 21,000 children were out of school in Porto Alegre (PT Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul, 2023).

Considering this trajectory, it is worth highlighting a series of statements made by representatives of the legislature and a representative of one of the city's pioneering innovation programmes. Regarding the selective nature of Pacto Alegre in relation to the legislature, according to a member of the current government's support group, only councillors from the government's base were invited to participate in Pacto Alegre’s discussions:

Yes, there isn't much of a relationship between the City Assembly and the projects. There is a relationship between some political parties in the City Assembly and these projects. Because not all parties are represented in the Pacto Alegre. Initially, only a few parties were invited to participate. These are parties that have, for example, the ruling party. Base. Some parties from the government's base. (E1)

The workshop on mapping innovation ecosystems, in addition to presenting a composition without representation from the opposition bench in the City Assembly, from the working class, or from urban planners and environmentalists, also falls short in the way the priorities to be carried out in the programme are discussed and deliberated:

These are workshops where everything happens very quickly, you see? At a meeting, you create groups at random, each group deals with a different topic, they propose things, then they describe the things and present them, then you vote on the most important ones and the ones with the most votes will be the projects... I think... OK, they put together a set of projects based on that, which I think has value, but... I think it's fragile. Many are very fragile, so some have progressed further, but most have not. (E2)

Although even mainstream literature on smart cities draws attention to social aspects, both in documentary data and interviews, the facts revealed in the case of the most recent project for Porto Alegre show something else:

What happens? When we list the projects, there are many social projects, vision projects and so on, but when it comes to implementation, there are no resources for them. (E2)

[...] there is no room for this debate. This debate is a debate that... does not exist. I participate quite often, I don't go all the time... – because I am also curious as a researcher. Now, for example, the revision of the master plan, which is a super critical issue. And the city hired UN-Habitat... it's a consultancy to help, and they end up hiring... they pay the UN to hire people from here to do the work. But... the concept, it's a concept like this... there's the 4th District that becomes a space for speculation. (E2)

In other words, you have a whole history of tradition in that territory [the 4th District is a former industrial area inhabited by a low-income population], and you're just going to take the people, send them away and turn it into what? (E2)

The interviewee also reveals another problem regarding discussions about the city: the near absence of urban planning specialists. This might lead to debates that favour business, real estate and construction sectors rather than making the territory accessible to all social segments: ‘It [the city's urban planning department] hardly exists anymore. There is no longer any expertise in this area’ (E2).

One of the legislators (a former opposition councillor) highlights the ability to make the city more inclusive and modern by drawing attention to technological and human capital. At a time when the mayor is considering limiting the company's activities, the interviewee comments:

Procempa has miles and miles of fibre--optic cables in the city. People have no idea of the extent. But this is an asset, because Procempa's fibre-optic cable is spread across the four corners of the city, reaching the school in Timbaúva, the Timbaúva health centre in the north, but also Restinga, in the far south, and the health centre in Lami. So, in every health centre, in every school, there are Procempa fibre-optic cables. So it can even install Wi-Fi that extends to the community. (E3)

Other aspects highlighted by interviewees that reveal contradictions in the city's current development policy include: focusing on productivity and attracting capital, by placing quality of life and sustainability on the back burner; concentrating decision-making in government and business sectors, with little participation from community and worker representatives; viewing the master plan from a speculative perspective, with a disregard to local communities, environmental issues, and historical and cultural heritage; valuing large capital companies, even those from outside the city and state, to the detriment of local entrepreneurs; favouring or opening up to the private sector's leading role in deciding the city's future.

The research data reveal that the actions accumulated by Pacto Alegre explicitly adhere to a neoliberal conception of the city, in which the commitment is to transform the city into a commodity. The superficial and peripheral nature of the programme's approach to the city's central issues – such as violence, unemployment, housing, poverty and inequality, and the environment – reveal its fragility and lack of commitment to different strata of the city’s population.

The smart city approach promoted in Brazil not only neglects the human dimension and focuses solely on technological devices, as if they were free of interests and neutral in relation to their uses (as in the case of facial recognition technologies), but is also superficial in its proposed solutions.

An analysis of the “experiences” of smart cities in Porto Alegre reveals that, just like innovation, smart cities function as a magical concept (Pollitt and Hupe, 2011) widely disseminated by sellers of technological solutions and uncritically assimilated by diverse audiences. By breaking with the history of Porto Alegre, which is renowned for its participatory budgeting and the World Social Forum, the discussions within Pacto Alegre as well as the debates on smart cities avoid popular participation, by prioritising business elites and segments aligned with neoliberalism.

Critical considerations and new urban possibilities

Throughout the article, we highlight the actions of individual and collective social actors in relation to the idea of smart cities and the debate on innovation, which generally tends to be reduced to technological innovations or to the application of solutions based on Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence, within a market logic. We consider cities to be an increasingly complex space of dispute that demands an interdisciplinary approach, but which, above all, is conditioned by macro aspects. Thus, based on the data analysed here, we have observed, whether due to political choice or limited understanding of the phenomenon by the actors most directly involved in the programmes (Pacto Alegre and Alliance for Innovation), a certain reification in the concept of the city and a discourse that takes the urban process as independent of political and economic development (Harvey, 2006; Mozorov and Bria, 2018).

Considering the categories regarding cities and innovation highlighted by Harvey (2006), Morozov and Bria (2018), Angelidou (2017), Grossi and Pianezzi (2017) and Dagnino (2016), we have come to the conclusion that Porto Alegre, based on the programmes mentioned and the actions of the last two municipal governments, is aligned with a Conceptual Analytical Framework of neoliberal features, translating into Operational Methodological Instruments such as privatisations and concessions of public activities to the private sector, prioritisation of the agenda for the reproduction of local capital and attraction of foreign capital, transformation of urban space to privilege consumption and exclude spaces for the participation of workers' representatives or social movements, by privileging the participation of businesspeople and representatives of business associations.

The documents relating to macro challenges included references to topics of broad interest to the population, such as quality of life and knowledge. Even though some of their proposals highlighted the role of private initiative as capable of producing solutions, these topics proposals, did not advance in the vision of their creators. The projects that advanced the most were those that had the greatest capacity to attract foreign investment or generate revenue for the private sector, or that would make the city more attractive as a consumer market.

The debates, translated into suggestions from workshops held on macro challenges for Porto Alegre with participants who appeared to share the same ideological alignment, hide the conflicts of interest that permeate the public agenda in the municipality. Thus, suggestions such as improving public transport are not debated in terms of the proliferation of app-based transport and the deterioration of public transport. While the quality of life macro challenge highlights the importance of culture, the municipal administration, through measures aimed at privatising the Municipal Public Market, neglects the symbolic value of this space for the low-income population (as consumers or through work in small businesses) and for the Afro-descendant community. In this vein, we also highlight actions to privatise cultural spaces and the absence of public request for proposals to stimulate the development of cultural projects for the city, as well as the absence of dialogue with the city's cultural sectors.

Finally, we have observed that city projects and innovation initiatives served to conceal the highly ideological nature of debates on cities and innovation in Porto Alegre, particularly within the Pacto Alegre programme. This reinforces the thesis that such debates need to be based on the explicit articulation of theoretical macro-fundamentals and the epistemological assumptions that guide the scientific discourse underpinning the practical actions of everyday municipal management. Taking Irazábal and Jirón (2021) as a reference, a city perspective committed to its real problems must, necessarily, not only consider the multiple local and situated knowledge that is indispensable for building a project in terms of efficiency, economy, and sustainability, but also as part of a democratic and contextualised intervention stance.

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• Data availability statement:
  The entire dataset supporting the results of this study was published in the article itself.

Edited by

• Editors:
  Lucia Bógus
  Luiz César de Queiroz Ribeiro

• Organizers of this issue:
  Ana Marcela Ardila Pinto
  Carlos Fernando Ferreira Lobo
  Natália Villamizar Duarte

Data availability

The entire dataset supporting the results of this study was published in the article itself.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  22 June 2026
• Date of issue
  May-Aug 2026

History

• Received
  10 Nov 2023
• Accepted
  10 Apr 2024