Post-Constitutional Urban Policy: the experience of the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro

The aim of this article is to reflect on the ill-fated expectations of Brazilian urban policy, much identified with the regulation of urban land use. The present work is based on the premise that urban policy is the dimension of social policy that provides effectiveness to urban planning. Thus, it is fitting that it should be evaluated within a context in which it began to interact with a set of social rights included in the 1988 Constitution. These were the underlying reflections resulting from research, which was conducted through interviews with urban planners who had worked with urban policy in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro during the 1980s, 1990s and into the 2000s. The main transformations in urban policy and the challenges faced in managing this policy were used as a reference to reflect on the directions taken by Brazilian urban policy.