MSDUE Class of 2016–
Graduate Research Assistant at Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA).

Mariana is an urbanist and architect by training, designer and activist in her spare time, Mariana is a professional extremely interested in topics related to the Right to the City. She graduated in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Brasília, Brazil (2013) and completed her master’s degree in Design and Urban Ecologies in 2016.

What do you currently do and what are your interests?

Cities are my passion field of studying and living. It started during my undergrad in Architecture and Urbanism when I had first learned about the relationship between buildings and the city. To me, what makes great architecture is how it is settled on the urban landscape and how it relates to the human scale. I see cities as rich environments where people exchange ideas and intermingle and believe the power to achieve equitable societies relies on thinking collaboratively to raise awareness for alternative futures for urban spaces.

I went back to Brasilia in 2016 and had my first experience with informal settlements on the ground. I have worked for one year and eight months at CODHAB, the Housing Development Agency of the city of Brasilia, being responsible for coordinating the practice of Technical Support in Architecture and Urbanism in the low-income community of Porto Rico in Santa Maria, Brasilia.

I was responsible for updating the urban regularization process and to follow the construction of urban infrastructure, as the area did not have sewage, pavement and rain drainage. As I was inside the informal settlement daily, I bridged the dialogue between government and residents. I was also responsible for coordinating the work of a team composed of architects, engineers, construction workers and social workers on the renewing of extremely improvised houses with public investment. On Saturdays, the team of architects worked collaboratively with the community, redesigning public spaces in several other informal areas of the city. This work resulted in a publication with almost 700 pages organized by myself and four more architects, published in Portuguese by the end of 2019.

Since the beginning of 2018, I started teaching at a private institution in which most of my students live on the outskirts of Brasilia, where I grew up, and some are from low-income households. It has been a pleasure to raise their awareness of the importance of their position as architect-urbanists that come from the periphery and to raise their voice to take over their own urban space and to question the injustices that they suffer from daily in such a segregated city.

Currently, I am also working at IPEA which is a government-led research organization responsible for producing studies to base government planning and policy-making nationally. There, I am responsible for identifying, mapping and characterizing low income informal urban settlements nationwide.

During the past five years, everything that I have worked on and studied was related to the economic, social and political forces that shape the urban spaces and the struggle to achieve the right to the city. I also gave several lectures, wrote and published articles, and participated in seminars to share all of my experiences that are described above.

How did the program change or complement your former/future practice and profession?

In MSDUE, I was able to develop deeper understandings of cities. I worked with peers from all over the world and from different backgrounds. New York is a global city and having friends, professors and partners from every corner of the planet made me feel not only capable to build collectively, but it also made me part of a bigger network of people who are trying to reshape the urban dynamics in the current global scenario. Living in New York with the scholarship provided by the Brazilian government also provided me with the ability to overcome personal struggles of being abroad with a tiny budget, and, as competitive as New York is, I am proud of having succeeded in my life as a New Yorker. As they say: “if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”

During the program, I worked on topics like housing, gentrification, local economies and alternative mobilities, always looking for ways to reinforce dynamics that are opportunities to improve democracy and mitigate urban social inequalities. During my masters, the students and I not only discussed theory, but we also thought about ways to rethink strategies to reshape the urban dynamic. Using tools such as data visualization, community action-research and mapping, the students built knowledge collectively.

By the end of the program, I was excited about reconnecting with my hometown and starting to bridge the knowledge acquired in New York with the reality in Brasilia, as I felt that those debates about cities were needed here. For my thesis, I decided to propose an after school program for students to discuss cities – called Our Common Home – in which during the year of 2016 myself and a partner facilitated research, debates, workshops, among other activities with high school students so they could expand their knowledge on their neighborhood and how they could see themselves as relevant actors in the daily life on their own place. My thesis was titled “Urban Pedagogies as a Practice of the Right to the City”, and through it I was able to bring together two of my favorite theorists: Paulo Freire and David Harvey.

All of the skills I acquired at the MSDUE program, both personally and professionally, have been extremely important to my career. I am grateful for the professors, friends and partners I made during my two years studying and working in New York, all of that supported by the Brazilian Federal Government scholarship program titled ‘Science without Borders’ that have been under attack by the current political forces in the country.

Personal Links:

Portfolio: https://www.marianabomtempo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianabomtempo/

Brazilian Lattes Platform: http://lattes.cnpq.br/4413745904556045