This article is structured in four sections. The first one briefly approaches the historical context of the fight for housing and infrastructure engaged by the residents of Vila Dique, a popular neighborhood located in the north area of the city of Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state. The second section places the residents’ fight for permanence in the current context of neoliberal production of space in the city, increased by big events. The third part is about clarifying the current scenario of urban planning processes, as well as the means of participation that already exist in Porto Alegre, such as the City Council for Urban and Environmental Development (CMDUA) and the Participative Budgeting (OP), seeking to correlate the performance of these means with the process that has been occurring in the community, where residents, together with the architecture studio EMAV – Popular Participative Practices, from the School of Architecture of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and other contributors have been materializing a Popular Plan for Vila Dique. On this part, we also talk about what we understand to be a participative or an excluding urban planning and about organization and records in Extension Projects. The last section approaches the elaboration of a methodology adopted to make the first stage of what would be a popular urbanization plan, which consists on a diagnosis for the collective understanding of the community, describing the steps and the pedagogical approaches that are used with the objective of making the participative dynamics more inclusive and representative.