The scale of encounter: the neighborhood as urban praxis

Abstract

This article develops an analysis of the influence of urban design on the lived experience of its inhabitants, investigating the tension between the space conceived by planning and the territory lived by the population. Drawing on a theoretical dialogue with the humanist urbanism of Jan Gehl and the critical theory of the production of space of Henri Lefebvre, the objective is to examine how residents perceive, react to, and appropriate an urban design that inherits modernist precepts. The study delves into the case of Palmas (TO), a planned city, employing the participatory process of the Jardim Aureny IV Neighborhood Plan as a laboratory. It adopts a qualitative methodology that articulated the observation of workshops with documentary analysis. The results indicate a profound connection between the design's characteristics and daily conflicts: sectorization and urban voids are perceived as drivers of social fragmentation, while infrastructure precarity is directly associated with public health impacts. The analysis reveals that informal meeting spaces gain importance precisely where formal planning has failed. It is concluded that the participatory methodology, by giving voice to the community, proves to be a powerful diagnostic tool, exposing the mismatch between the urban form and life, and pointing to paths for their reconciliation.