A produção de equipamentos urbanos como alternativa de política social - o Programa Nacional de Centros Sociais Urbanos

Resumo

It has been very usual in the brasilian government policy to build public
equipnients for social public Services like "Social Centres", "Sporting Centres" and
"Communites Centres", in order to try to minimize the problems of the urban
poverty, specially in the big cities, where they are more concentrated. Besides the
equipments relevence as elements of spacial organization, the main funcion of
equipments building policy is to support public services like health, education and
social assistency. The meaning of this social equipments policy has been stressed in
this article. The main purpose of this paper is to analise one example of this policies:
the National Program of Urban Social Centres — Programa Nacional de Centros
Sociais Urbanos (PNCSU)—that had been developed from 1975 to 1984. As a result
of the program more than 500 units were buildt all over the country, most of then
located around metropolitan centers. The PNCSU is analised regarding three main
issues: institutionnl, flnantial investmments and the results. I belive that it might
contribute to the present debate about social programs since it makes possible to
clear up the limits of this kind of building equipments policies for social policies
purposes.