Paper short abstract:

We intend to reflect on the actions and impacts of current housing policies and urban public initiative (or with state incentive) in the suburbs of Luanda and on the emergence of emancipatory and/or transforming practices of resistance able to contribute to an approach to the 'right to the city'.

Paper long abstract:

The current housing policies of public initiative (or with state incentive) in Angola are promoting the emergence and consolidation of urban paradigms that tend to aggravate the socio-economic and territorial inequalities inherited from the civil-war period (1975-2002). In the capital, where the poverty of the suburbs is truly expressive, civil society organizations and social groups with fewer resources criticize the actions of the executive in order to defend the equitable distribution of urban resources (such as housing properly infrastructured and the benefits of urbanization) and the collective participation in a transformed urban life.

We intend to reflect on the type of (sub)urban 'governmentality' recently implemented in Luanda by identifying, on the one hand, actions and impacts arising from the strategic and programmatic structures that define the practices of party-state (centralized and autocratic) and, on the other hand, the corresponding counter-conducts which also characterize it (in accordance with Foucault, 2008). We also propose to recognize the contradictions of the 'production (and transformation) of space' (Lefebvre, 1974) and to identify emancipatory practices of resistance able to contribute to an approach to the 'right to the city' (as advocated by Lefebvre, 1968 and Harvey, 2008).

FOUCAULT, M. Segurança, território e população (1977-1978). São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2008.

HARVEY, D. The right to the city. New Left Review. London: NLR, No. 53, September-October 2008, 23-40, [Ac. 20.10.2011] In http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2740

LEFEBVRE, H. Le droit à la ville, Paris: Anthropos, 1968.

LEFEBVRE, H. La production de l'espace, Paris: Anthropos, 1974.