The land issue and the role of real estate agencies in the Metropolitan Region of Campinas (SP)

• Grant number: 15/20019-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2015
• End date: July 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Lucia Zanin Shimbo
• Grantee: Beatriz Silva Costa
• Host Institution: Instituto de Arquitetura e Urbanismo de São Carlos (IAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

From the 2000s there was an important expansion of the influence of large construction companies and developers in Brazil, due to a real estate restructuring process. This restructuring has been driven by an increasing openness to international capital (Stock Exchange), by economic stability and by facilities to obtain credits and housing loans, largely, subsidized by public funds. In this sense, there was the formation of a new pattern production of urban space that was structured in the interaction between the financial sector and real estate, featuring close ties between real estate valuation and land ownership.Thus, increasingly, as effects of this restructuring, we can see that the priority is given to financial and economic factors at the expense of the social function of the land, reinforcing socio-spatial segregation processes in contemporary cities, as they concentrate investments in valued areas and social housing developments on the fringes of the urban area. Considering this problem, it is necessary to develop studies about the fundamental theoretical relationship between land, labor and capital occurred in the recent real estate restructuring, particularly in the housing sector. In this context, some agents inserted in the logic of capital are essential as they have been drivers of the transformation of cities.This research proposes an analysis of the relationship between the land issue and socio-spatial implications of the recent real estate restructuring. Thus, we expect to identify what are the housing products resulting from this process, what are the decisive factors in determining the land price and who are the agents involved. In particular, we intend to identify the role of estate agencies in determining the price of land, to contribute to the understanding of this agent that is often absent in the academic debate. This study defines as territorial cutting, the Metropolitan Region of Campinas, which is consonant to the movement of intense real estate and financial expansion and it uses a qualitative approach, using the following methodological procedures: bibliographical research, documentary research and field research.