Autopoietic Participation and Community Learning: Practices for a Socio-ecological Transformation

Keywords: Adaptive Governance, Participatory Urban Planning, Public Participation, Autopoiesis, Community Learning, Socio-ecological Transformation, Medium-sized Cities, Brazil, Sustainability Transitions, Urban Resilience

THREE PILARS OF MY RESEARCH:

Social Participation in Brazilian Urban Planning

This pilar of my research presents an in-depth analysis of social participation in Brazilian urban planning, articulating the concepts of representative, participatory, and deliberative democracy. It examines the main institutional mechanisms—such as policy councils, conferences, public hearings, participatory budgeting, and master plans—highlighting both their potential and limitations. It also addresses less formalized practices and the impact of digital technologies on participation, warning about access inequalities and the risks of symbolic processes. A qualitative characterization of social participation is proposed, based on its forms, types, determinants, and levels, with references to the participation scales of Arnstein, Wilcox, and IAP2. Concludes that, despite normative advances and innovative experiences, most mechanisms still operate at intermediate levels, with limited effective citizen empowerment.

Cities and Complexity: Social Participation for Socio-ecological Transformation

This pilar expands the analysis of social participation by linking it to socio-ecological dynamics and the systemic challenges faced by cities. It is grounded in Second-Order Cybernetics and the concept of autopoiesis, interpreting urban systems as complex adaptive systems interdependent with the environment. It proposes repositioning social participation as a structuring element of socio-ecological transformation, moving beyond functionalist approaches to sustainability that rely solely on indicators and targets. It advocates for a territorialized, self-regulated form of participation, oriented toward collective learning, capable of fostering profound changes in the relationships between society, nature, and urban planning.

Governance for an Autopoietic Participatory System

This pilar consolidates the theoretical and operational foundations of the research’s methodological proposal by integrating concepts of adaptive governance and distributed organization. It frames participatory planning as a process of teaching and learning, carried out in networks and within the territory, capable of generating distributed cognition and social memory to address the uncertainties and changes of contemporary urban systems. Adaptive governance is presented not as an alternative institutional model, but as a conceptual bridge for building dynamic, collaborative, and context-based regimes of public action, essential to the autopoiesis of participatory systems. Also explores participatory methodologies aligned with urban complexity—such as social mapping, dialogue circles, workshops, tactical urbanism, and exploratory scenarios—connecting them to the strengthening of community resilience and communication as social resonance.