The Community Land Trust: limits and possibilities of application in Federal District of Brazil
Community Land Trust; Termo Territorial Coletivo; collective land tenure; counter-hegemonic planning; right to appropriate housing; Federal District.
Through history, the problems related to the access to appropriate housing in Brazilian cities have never had sufficient answers from the State, as the operator of Urban Planning. Starting from the critical analysis of the discipline’s conformation, which is intrinsically linked to the social relation with land property and domain, it is understood that those limitations are more related to political than technical matters. The brief history of Federal District (DF) in Brazil, owner of a vast amount of land, is full of examples of how the (in)action of State intend to meet the demands of a very specific classist group. With the support of Decolonial Theory, which criticizes modernity and coloniality as expressions of the Eurocentric – limited and oppressive – vision of the world, this work discusses epistemic and action alternatives within Urban Planning. We seek options to housing demands in DF, while territory of the global South. The Community Land Trusts, a model based on collective ownership of land and runed by its dwellers, are an example of breaking some paradigms related to individuals’ relation with the land. They are also innovative in the defense of collective values and in the promotion of land perpetual affordability. Therefore, the CLTs is understood as a ‘counter-hegemonic’ planning instrument. Because of that, we take it as the object of analysis of this dissertation, studying it especially through the experience that seeks initiates it in Rio de Janeiro, where its name has been translated to Termo Territorial Coletivo. The combination of theories, historical data and empirical information allow us to defend the inclusion of the TTC in the list of public housing policies of social interest in the DF in two different ways: as part of the land regularization process, and as an instrument of housing supply on public lands.