By Andrea Hargraves 
Brazilian cities need to be rebuilt and transformed, and at the same time they face two main challenges: reducing urban inequalities and promoting environmental and climate transformation.
These challenges can only be met with boldness, political will and the ability to agree on solutions and gain support to make their implementation viable, contrary to powerful economic interests.
But for politicians to dare to implement innovative and transformative plans and projects in cities, it takes more than political will and social sensitivity.
It is essential to diagnose and analyze urban problems, identify evidence and suggest feasible and effective alternatives to goals such as decarbonizing cities and ensuring housing for all. Here comes the role of scientific and technological development.
In this column, written specifically for the #Science in Elections campaign, an initiative of Instituto Serrapilheira and Maranta Inteligencia Politica that celebrates Science Month in July, I will discuss the difficulties and potential of scientific development to contribute to the formulation of urban policies that confront these two challenges.
Urban research has advanced a lot in the country since the 1980s, when Anpur (National Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Urban and Regional Planning) and several graduate programs were established. Today there are 57 in urban planning and 29 in architecture and urbanism, gathering thousands of researchers in laboratories, centers and research groups.
Although a strong scientific framework has been structured in the region, the disruption of urban planning in the public sector has been one of the biggest obstacles for science to contribute to the transformation of urban policies in Brazilian cities.
In addition to the scarcity of resources and priority in funding agencies, the region suffers from a lack of government structures that can take ownership of their analyzes and proposals and use them to implement public policies.
In contrast to health and education, which for decades have had a stable technical and administrative structure and in which the findings of science have been incorporated into their policies (even when they are significantly weak, as in the current government of denial, see Vuecruz’s role in the epidemic) the lack of continuity and fragility in the field of Urban development is well known.
Besides the extinction of the NBB, in 1986, the Department of Applied Studies and Research (Depea), a sector of the bank that promoted and contracted studies to improve housing and urban development policy, with the aim of improving its performance (which almost never happened, it’s good to say).
Since the end of the BNH to the Department of Cities, which was created in 2003, urban policies have roamed six fragile federal government agencies, which have not even been regulated. During this period, corporations, urban planning autonomous enterprises and housing firms in most states, which were losing the ability to plan towns, were deactivated or extinct.
With the approval of the City Law (2001) and the establishment of the Ministry of Cities (2003), it was believed that state policy aimed at urban development would be regulated, with continuity, which could establish a lasting dialogue with research institutions. .
Progress has been made, such as integrating studies and proposals from universities in the formulation of new regulatory frameworks, sectoral policies and plans aimed at guaranteeing rights to housing, sanitation, solid waste and mobility, as well as in structuring information systems and qualification of general managers in the municipality.
The assessments, which were not always positive, were made through surveys contracted by the same ministry on federal programs, such as Minha Casa Minha Vida, PAC for slum urbanization and mobility. It could have corrected trends and improved interventions. But in 2016, that process came to a halt, and in 2019, Bolsonaro abolished the Ministry of Cities.
For science to be able to contribute to the transformation of cities, it is essential that the urban age becomes state policy, with continuity, within the scope of a new Federal Pact. and that governments regain their planning capacity, an activity that only public authorities could perform.
What needs to be changed in cities is diagnosed by thousands of scholarly works, which point to the unlikely and unsustainable character of the urban development model of the twentieth century.
This model is based on segregation, inequality, and speculation, which allocate the worst sites to the poorest; in environmental degradation, which pollutes water, soil and air and deforests protected areas; give priority to the car, which fits unevenly in the road space and emits greenhouse gases; Excessive soil infiltration, which leads to flooding; In occupying danger zones, causing disasters.
The contribution of science has been fundamental to understanding how cities are organized and to deciding what needs to be changed. Urban research has performed well in criticism, but it needs to move forward with investigation of solutions, and this is not only up to the researchers.
To go beyond criticism and theory, a tripod is needed: governments committed to transformation, scientific and technological development compatible with the development of coherent and workable proposals and community participation to politically support the process.
The new paradigm of urban development for the twenty-first century must be based on the climatic transformation of cities and the reduction of inequalities, and research must be directed towards these goals.
For example, decarbonizing urban mobility requires an energy transition, replacing fossil fuels with clean energy. Therefore, there is a need for research to suggest alternatives to electrify the bus fleet at lower costs.
In buildings, research needs to find solutions to make the capture and use of solar energy less costly and easier and to decarbonize civil construction. Architectural research is needed to rationalize the use of energy, using ventilation and natural lighting.
Because urban research is interdisciplinary in nature, there are many areas in which science can contribute to rebuilding and transforming cities. It is hoped that this issue will emerge in the elections and will end the denial.