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Postcards from Fortaleza, Brazil: a Photo Essay of our Study Abroad Experiences May 13–26, 2019
By Ken Salo, DURP
In summer 2019, five multinational University of Illinois students explored the public streets, university campuses, and urban squares of rich and poor Fortaleza, Brazil, for two weeks as part our UP428 International Planning Workshop. They helped amplify the marginalized voices, concealed stories and powerful place memories of inhabitants mobilizing around an inclusionary zoning statute (ZEIS) for dignified livelihoods in this deeply unequal and segregated city, guided by peers and faculty from Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), Universidade da Integração International da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira (UNILAB), Centro Defesa Da Vida Herbert Sousa (CDVHS), Fundação Marcos de Bruin @FundacaoMarcosdeBruin, and residents of the communities of Bom Jardim (Francisca Wanderlania Souza Lima (Lany), Amanda Thifane Pereira Lima, Francisco Elivelton Rodrigues de Lima) and Lagamar (Diana Desireé Alfredo Melo, Sara Eduardo Leite, Natanaele Vieira dos Santos).
These postcards sample the multiple memories, gestures, and feelings that participants chose to share of their brief but intense experiences of the social struggles in this segregated but ever-changing city.
“This workshop reconfirmed that learning outside the (national) classroom is urgently necessary to develop transnational urban literacy.”
—Ken Salo, DURP faculty leading this study abroad course
Photo: Rogerio Costa of Centro Defesa Da Vida Herbert De Sousa
“Taking international students to some of the densest and most precarious neighborhoods in Fortaleza was a very efficient way of alerting locals that this is a pressing global phenomenon and allowed for comparing housing conditions for poor residents in urban Brazil, Bangladesh, China, and Chicago.”
—Professor Clarissa Freitas, UFC, MUP 2003.
Photo: Nagilla Frota, UFC
“‘Every day, life is a resistance…a struggle against drugs and crimes…in order to survive and just not to die I have a set of orders to follow…fight against system may kill you.’ A quote (translated) from the speech of a favela resident that really touched me; her tear-mixed words gave the ultimate meaning to the whole trip by dragging me down to the deepest corner of their everyday struggle—so dark but yet so alive. Suddenly all made sense to me, that it is not just the ‘right to space’ they are fighting for, rather it is a struggle for ‘the right to live.’ Planners like us can only do a part by participating in their fight for space, but eventually we have a bigger role to play to ensure their ‘space to live’ as a whole. What I learned in the first year of master's program about planning for people and insurgent planning all seemed to make sense with my experiences with Fortaleza, Brazil.”
—Shafinaz Sameen, MUP 2020
Photo: Shafinaz Sameen
“It was truly amazing to see the urban planning skills that our hosts employed within the favelas that we visited. The students showed us how they mapped these informal communities and worked with local people.”
—Brian Waters, MUP/MS Agriculture & Consumer Economics 2021
Photo: Ken Salo
“I was inspired by the Brazilian Capoeira master Cobra Mansa’s insight that our responsibility as public intellectuals is to ‘make a copy of the keys to university education for next generation.’”
—Ming Hang, MUP 2020
Photo: Prof. Ricardo Nascimento, UNILAB
“This was our last gathering as a large group. That night encompassed what the whole trip was: fun, food, culture, and community.”
—Jameelah McCregg, BAUSP 2020
Photo: Luisa Fernandes
“The UFC student protests against education budget cuts showed me how important they view public education and inspired me to rethink our educational practices.”
—Khiren Johnston, BAUSP Student
Photo: Lara Barriera, UFC
“Nice to meet you!” Farewell Poem by Bom Jardim and Lagamar residents.
Photo: Adriana Gerônimo
"We hope to have sparked an ongoing dialogue on the urgent need for our students to reimagine and then recreate the more equitable and humane future cities that we all desire, grounded in the visions of those previously excluded, worldwide."
—Ken Salo and Clarissa Freitas
Photo: ARQPET-UFC
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