The Statute of the City and the Community Land Trust: dialogues and approaches

Abstract

The Statute of the City (Law 10.257/2001) constitutes the most important legal framework for urban planning in Brazil. Conceived from the struggle for Urban Reform, the law offers several progressive instruments to aid the governance of cities, aiming the strengthening of participatory planning, increasing the access to urban rights and the realization of the social function of property. However, after 20 years of existence, the Statute of the City still faces several obstacles to promote the changes it was created, in particular related to the low application of its instruments. In this exploratory work, we present a new urban instrument that is being debated in the country, the Community Land Trust, which is structured through a joint application of Statute’s instrument. Drawing on a literature review and an analysis of current legislation, the objective of this research is to understand how the Community Land Trust aligns with the Statute of the City, examining whether it can provide a concrete path to enhance the application of its instruments. This reflection is relevant as the low effectiveness of the Statute of the City urban planning tools is one of the barriers to the realization of the right to the city in the country, and the proposal of new approaches for their use may help ensure the objectives of urban policy, as advocated by the law.