Cities in Transition: new ways of thinking about and experiencing urban spaces
Planeta COPPE / Transport Engineering / News
Date: 24/08/2026
How do people perceive, experience, and participate in the transformation of cities? For Professor Matheus Oliveira of the Transportation Engineering Program (PET) at Coppe/UFRJ, answering this question requires both broadening our perspective on urban space and considering–in addition to infrastructure and indicators–people’s experiences and relationships with the places where they live.
A researcher in the fields of urban mobility, innovation, social participation, and living labs, Matheus leads projects at Coppe that aim to bring together universities, government, businesses, and society to create and test solutions to urban challenges.
This approach is based on the understanding that the transformation of cities does not depend solely on physical interventions or technical decisions. The way people use spaces, participate in decision-making, and establish relationships with their territories can also help shape the future of cities.
“A city isn’t just made up of infrastructure, regulations, and indicators. It’s also shaped by our emotions, fears, desires, encounters, and our ability to collectively imagine other possible futures,” says the professor.
The research conducted at Coppe aligns with this perspective by exploring new ways of understanding mobility and urban spaces and by creating experimental environments that bring together different stakeholders in the search for solutions.
This line of thought is also reflected in the book Cidades Extraordinárias: o anti-guia emocional para a revolução urbana (Extraordinary Cities: The emotional anti-guide to the urban revolution), written by Matheus over the course of nearly five years and illustrated by Rodrigo Bueno. The work combines essay, manifesto, and visual narrative to offer a perspective on cities based on the experiences, emotions, and relationships of those who live in them.
Beyond traditional solutions to urban problems, the aim is to spark new questions about how we perceive places, how we participate in their transformation, and what kind of cities we want to build collectively.
