“The local challenges repeat themselves at the international level. If we cannot deal with them locally, we probably are going to have problems dealing with them globally”
Ana Livia Araujo Esteves about her course, the peculiarities of BRICS urban policies and why it is vital to be studied by IR students
The International Program “International Relations and Global Studies” provides students with a wide variety of career paths, but one thing remains unchanged: the training of world-class specialists in two areas at once - International Relations and Public Policy and social sciences. The IRGS press center spoke with Ana Livia Araujo Esteves, a lecturer of Urban Policy and Governance in the BRICS Countries course and had a fruitful dialogue about the discipline located at the junction of these areas.
- Tell us about your past. How did your career change throughout time and lead to your current focus on urban governance? How did you come to Russia?
I have studied International Relations in Brazil, in the city of Sao Paulo. I really love international relations and this is my area of focus. While I was studying there, I was doing my final thesis of the baccalaureate and I wanted to write about Russia and its foreign policy, but there were some problems with bibliography about Russia in Brazil. There was a lot of literature about it that was written in the United States by American writers. However, there were no Russian authors translated into Portuguese in the library of my university and I started to wonder how I could study Russia without access to the Russian view of international affairs. It's been a long time ago, there was no such easy access to the internet. I realized that to have access to the Russian view of things I have to come to Russia, learn Russian language and study here. That's what I did, I got my master at MGIMO on Russian foreign policy.
I thought I would stay in Russia just during my Master’s degree, but as it turns out, the country gave me a lot of opportunities and I ended up doing my PhD at the Higher School of Economics. I have already focused on Russian-Brazilian relations, because I'm very interested in intra-BRICS relations and how the BRICS can eventually shape a different world order, where we take into account the interests of every country, not only of the BRICS members. I hope the BRICS can make the international arena a little more democratic.
While I was in Brazil, I worked for the City Hall of Sao Paulo. Also, we used to work in urban planning for Sao Paulo and in international cooperation, as I worked in the Secretariat for International Relations of the city. I got in contact with international cooperation in the level of the cities, meaning not necessarily relations between Brazil and Russia, but mostly between Sao Paulo and Novosibirsk, or Sao Paulo and Yekaterinburg. This was a very enriching experience for me. This is why I wanted to focus more and share with the students how the BRICS can cooperate in urban planning.
- Could you elaborate on the structure of the course? How is it typically organized? What are the few key areas or themes that students should pay attention to during your course?
We are studying urban planning within the BRICS countries. We focus a lot on each individual country and then try to figure out how these countries share their best experiences in urban planning and challenges as well. After that we look at them as a group with the potential to cooperate within the BRICS.
As we are in an international relations program, we try to make sure that the study that we're going to do about the theory of urban planning is speaking to the study that we do in the theory of international relations, because they are surprisingly similar in many ways. In the same way as in international relations, we try to understand how countries can find a common language. While, in fact, countries have common interests, despite this fact, it's hard for them to cooperate. And why is it that? If we're all interested in clean water, why can't we just cooperate and get clean water, right? Things are more complicated than that. And urban planning is the same thing. Everybody's interested in a city to have a great and clean place to live in, a city with transport and parks, a city that is beautiful and efficient. Everybody wants that. Then why is it so hard for us to accomplish that goal? Therefore, theory of international relations and urban planning do speak to each other a lot. In the beginning of the course, we try to understand that.
Summing up, we study the theory of urban planning with the eyes of a student of international relations. The students can choose the BRICS countries that are more interesting for them. We try to understand their process of urbanization. What are the common challenges that they faced? How hard was the urbanization process in each of the BRICS countries? As I told you, after, we try to figure out how the BRICS are collaborating to make sure that their cities are environmentally friendly, economically productive, and socially just.
- How can you describe experience teaching on our program and interacting with the students?
I really like it. It's really interesting, firstly, to be speaking English. The students speak English very well. It's great to see how they support each other in the situation where everybody is speaking a lingua franca and there is a lot of support among them. That seems to be very satisfying to have found a common ground. We can receive different collaborations from students that are from other countries. It enriches the program a lot. We do a lot of group work, which is cool.
I was wondering, because we're coming from international relations, how is it going to be for them to study urban planning? But I see that the students want their horizons to be expanded as much as possible and the course handles it. The fact that we're bringing a new subject is not a problem, on the contrary, it's something that is well-received, because it's contributing to the opening of horizons that the students are requiring. It's quite interesting to have foreigners, because everybody can talk about their city and then we see how similar the problems are.
- Why is your course important for students in both International Relations and Public Policy? What key skills or knowledge does it provide that is beneficial to both spheres?
Urban planning is a very good area for us to understand how public policy has to be elaborated in a way that is attentive to the interests of the people and how it can be legitimized and applied, even though sometimes the interests of particular groups may be challenged. These are issues that are very important for any kind of public policy elaboration and execution. Urban planning is a good area for us to discuss those problems, because we are urban citizens and we understand that these challenges play out in our daily lives.
Consequently, urban planning is a great window for us to understand public policy in general and how to deal with the difference of interests between various groups. The same thing happens in international relations at the international level. We are going to have to establish mechanisms to elaborate international policy that is a common interest for everybody. Then we're going to have to debate how to implement these policies, despite the fact that sometimes some countries or some groups maybe are not going to feel completely embraced by those policies.
These local challenges repeat themselves at the international level. If we cannot deal with them locally, we probably are going to have problems dealing with them internationally as well.
- What makes the BRICS countries the primary area of interest for your work?
I would like to say that to study urban policy focusing on the BRICS countries is quite important to understand the challenges of emerging economies, because normally we do study urban planning, basing ourselves in what happened in Europe. We have a very Eurocentric view of how this urbanization happens, what are the consequences of this, and how the city should look like.
I think when we study the BRICS, we are able to deconstruct some ideas that we have and look at how emerging economies deal in their own way with problems.The idea is that we can look at urban planning from a critical perspective, from a post-colonial perspective, not from the “ideal” European case. I believe it's very important nowadays to bring new perspectives to build a new world. If we want to build something new, we have to obtain new bases and the BRICS is the perfect platform for us to have them with the best practices from Brazil, China, Russia and not necessarily from Paris or London. Let's change the perspective a little bit.
- Considering significant diversity among cities within the BRICS nations (like Shanghai, Moscow, São Paulo), how does the course address the challenges of studying urban governance in such varied context? What are the main similarities and differences between them?
We do have a great diversity of cities within the BRICS, because we are speaking of countries, especially the founding members, that are continental in their size and influence. The diversity is not only between the countries, it's also within the countries.
Even though we have a very diversified structure, if you look at their organizational process, we can find a lot of similarities, when it comes to the transition from rural to urban stage. By focusing on these common economic challenges and the common colonial past for the BRICS countries, we can find the common ground between them.
There were a lot of cooperation projects within the BRICS already. When we're speaking about cooperation in urban planning, we're not speaking of something that should happen as a potential. We're speaking about something that has already happened. We can study how the urban planners found something to share and adopt policies that were elaborated for Sao Paulo, for Curitiba or for New Delhi. This is a process that is already happening and not something that we're looking for in the future.
Now, considering the issue of diversity, we can see that the BRICS is expanding even more. It has new full members that bring more diversity to the group. Indonesia became a permanent member of the group. This country has one of the most interesting urbanization trajectories that we can study, because it's already an urbanization that completely challenges the difference between the rural and the urban. What is a rural area? Where is agriculture and where is industry? In Indonesia this dichotomy is already gone and this is probably what's going to happen in all the BRICS countries from now on. We see that even when the country is in the global south, it can be in the vanguard. We look at them to make sure that we're going to acknowledge the lessons which they learned and avoid them.
We thank Ana Livia for such an interesting discussion and wish her all the best with her course at IR&GS!
The material was prepared within the framework of the project “Press center of International Relations and Global studies”: interview: Veronika Lyamtseva (2nd year), editor: Timofei Petrov (2nd year, press centre coordinator)