The case of reducing speed on marginal roads in the city of São Paulo as an experience of struggles for redefining the urban space

Abstract

Under the main argument of providing safer traffic, the São Paulo City Hall implemented the Life Protection Plan (PPV), a series of measures to calm traffic on the city's road space. Among them, one that generated considerable controversy was the reduction of speed limits on the Pinheiros and Tietê highways implemented in July 2015. This article aims to understand how the struggles for the reduction of speed limits on the marginal roads took place, making its implementation possible. For this, we will seek to identify who were the subjects involved, what speeches they defended about the measure, and how they articulated to seek their demands. These, then, are the objectives of the article. For our findings, we used secondary data that were analyzed based on categories extracted from the Theory of Discourse by Laclau and Mouffe (2015). The results showed that the chain of equivalence formed between the City Hall and civil society organizations was fundamental for the implementation of the measure. And that it generated positive results. However, the unpopularity of this public policy threatens its continuity.