The right to the city and the postmodern plots of a social project aimed at young people living in the metropolis: a study on the “Urban Youth” Program.

Abstract

This article approaches the theory behind a social initiative aimed at the youth of Sao Paulo named "Programa Jovens Urbanos". One of it's main goals is to increase and improve the mobility of the youth in the city, given that some of them live in what the program calls "urban peripheries", being therefore affected by different exclusionary factors, such as the mobility one. Our goal is to explore the idea of the restriction of circulation and transportation: which theories support thesis such as this? Why would one, after all, create a whole social enterprise that revolves around a huge variety of social actors (such as the government, private initiative, community organizations, NGOs e even the youth that actually live in this places) to make the youth circulate in the city but not to do the same in their own neighborhoods? These questions make the research necessary, starting from analyzing the base points of the social initiative and, from there, seeing what other points of view and interpretations are possible.