Ana Paula Pimentel Walker
Ana Paula Pimentel Walker is an associate professor in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan. She investigates how disenfranchised communities engage with urban governance and evaluates the significance of participatory institutions in planning socially and environmentally just cities. Pimentel Walker’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies. She teaches graduate courses in participatory planning and community development, comparative housing, environmental planning, award-winning capstones, and comparative planning law. She received a PhD in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego, master's degrees in both urban planning and Latin American studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a law degree from Brazil.
Ana Paula Pimentel Walker’s research goal is to identify institutional designs and participatory planning practices that have the potential to produce socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable cities. She conducts three research projects:
1) “The Significance of Participatory Institutions in Planning Socially Just Cities” examines the outcomes of participatory urban governance from the perspective of those living in informal settlements and Afro-Brazilian territories. Pimentel Walker reflects on the evolving discourses of citizen participation in light of three decades of participatory budgeting and planning in Brazil. Her findings highlight how partisan politics and profit-driven redevelopment projects have undermined the initial effectiveness of democratic planning as a tool of sustainable slum upgrading.
2) “Legal Institutions and the Planning Process: Conflicts between the Right to Adequate Housing and to a Sustainable Environment,” with Prof. Arquero de Alarcón, they investigate how the São Paulo Courts manage a wicked problem of the Global South: environmental degradation and risk in areas informally occupied by very low-income families.
3) “Migrant-run organizations (MROs) in Michigan: Documenting the nature and scope of immigrant and refugee-led community-based organizations,” with Profs. Gonzalez Benson and Yoshihama, they investigate civic inequalities in the undercounting and underfunding of MROs. This project aims to identify and amplify the voices of MROs in Michigan, building coalitions with local institutions.
4) Urban Planning Education through Mutual Global Learning: Through award winning capstone projects abroad, Taubman College students and client-partners in informal settlements and housing movements engage in collaborative data collection, working together to unpack complex urban problems associated with social vulnerability and segregation, and to co-produce deliverables that enhance client-partners’ capacity to promote positive change in their communities. Students develop the skills to work with, rather than work for, local partners in a global and multi-cultural context. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwxPSxQTApw AND https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzTmtwfManpBcm9IT1M5UG9zczg/view
Research Area Keyword(s):
Participatory budgeting and planning, community organizing, informality, ethnic land rights, environmental justice, migration and resettlement, Brazil, U.S.
Address: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ana Paula Pimentel Walker’s research goal is to identify institutional designs and participatory planning practices that have the potential to produce socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable cities. She conducts three research projects:
1) “The Significance of Participatory Institutions in Planning Socially Just Cities” examines the outcomes of participatory urban governance from the perspective of those living in informal settlements and Afro-Brazilian territories. Pimentel Walker reflects on the evolving discourses of citizen participation in light of three decades of participatory budgeting and planning in Brazil. Her findings highlight how partisan politics and profit-driven redevelopment projects have undermined the initial effectiveness of democratic planning as a tool of sustainable slum upgrading.
2) “Legal Institutions and the Planning Process: Conflicts between the Right to Adequate Housing and to a Sustainable Environment,” with Prof. Arquero de Alarcón, they investigate how the São Paulo Courts manage a wicked problem of the Global South: environmental degradation and risk in areas informally occupied by very low-income families.
3) “Migrant-run organizations (MROs) in Michigan: Documenting the nature and scope of immigrant and refugee-led community-based organizations,” with Profs. Gonzalez Benson and Yoshihama, they investigate civic inequalities in the undercounting and underfunding of MROs. This project aims to identify and amplify the voices of MROs in Michigan, building coalitions with local institutions.
4) Urban Planning Education through Mutual Global Learning: Through award winning capstone projects abroad, Taubman College students and client-partners in informal settlements and housing movements engage in collaborative data collection, working together to unpack complex urban problems associated with social vulnerability and segregation, and to co-produce deliverables that enhance client-partners’ capacity to promote positive change in their communities. Students develop the skills to work with, rather than work for, local partners in a global and multi-cultural context. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwxPSxQTApw AND https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzTmtwfManpBcm9IT1M5UG9zczg/view
Research Area Keyword(s):
Participatory budgeting and planning, community organizing, informality, ethnic land rights, environmental justice, migration and resettlement, Brazil, U.S.
Address: Ann Arbor, Michigan
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Papers by Ana Paula Pimentel Walker
How suitable are federal housing policies and slum upgrading programs for those living in young land occupations? Scholars rarely ask this question because research and policy target well-established settlements that have acquired tenure security. In contrast, young land occupations are highly vulnerable, emergent settlements threatened with eviction and are not sufficiently visible to attract government and scholarly attention. Through a multiyear collaboration with activists, social movements, nonprofits, and residents of young land occupations in São Paulo, Brazil, this participatory action research elucidates who occupies these locations and why, where they come from, and the housing struggles they face. A survey administered to 906 households depicts land occupiers as uniformly very poor and vulnerable, unlike the low- to modest-income dwellers of consolidated informal settlements. An assessment of existing social housing programs emphasizes the need to develop housing assistance and upgrading programs specifically targeting the socioeconomic conditions of land occupiers, thus proactively supporting them.
Keywords: young land occupations, poverty, social housing programs, slum upgrading, participatory action research.
How suitable are federal housing policies and slum upgrading programs for those living in young land occupations? Scholars rarely ask this question because research and policy target well-established settlements that have acquired tenure security. In contrast, young land occupations are highly vulnerable, emergent settlements threatened with eviction and are not sufficiently visible to attract government and scholarly attention. Through a multiyear collaboration with activists, social movements, nonprofits, and residents of young land occupations in São Paulo, Brazil, this participatory action research elucidates who occupies these locations and why, where they come from, and the housing struggles they face. A survey administered to 906 households depicts land occupiers as uniformly very poor and vulnerable, unlike the low- to modest-income dwellers of consolidated informal settlements. An assessment of existing social housing programs emphasizes the need to develop housing assistance and upgrading programs specifically targeting the socioeconomic conditions of land occupiers, thus proactively supporting them.
Keywords: young land occupations, poverty, social housing programs, slum upgrading, participatory action research.