“NEM VAZIO NEM URBANO”: IMPLICAÇÕES JURÍDICO-INSTITUCIONAIS DO SUMIÇO DAS ÁREAS RURAIS NO PLANEJAMENTO URBANO

Urban Farm DB summary

Drawing on two concrete cases handled by NAJUP Marli Coragem, a legal aid clinic linked to the law program at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), this action-research article examines urban planning issues in the municipalities of Nova Iguacu and Japeri in the Baixada Fluminense region of Brazil, seeking to understand the legal problems facing two farming communities the clinic assisted. It reviews how specialized literature defines rural and urban, the legislation relevant to farmers and their spaces, and how Brazil's statistics agency IBGE has treated the issue. The city of Rio de Janeiro and its Master Plan were added to the analysis through graduate research on urban agriculture, giving three quite different municipalities with similar consequences: family farmers' ability to exercise their rights when municipal zoning makes no provision for a rural area. The article concludes that while the specialized literature has moved past the rural-urban dichotomy, institutions have not kept pace, and this non-institutionalized reality generates numerous debates and concrete legal problems.