Public-private partnerships and housing provision in São Paulo State: between welfare and the real estate/financial logic

• Grant number: 16/24182-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2017
• End date: August 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Paula Freire Santoro
• Grantee: Pedro Henrique Rezende Mendonça
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The public-private partnership model spread over Brazil in the 2000's, originating from a previous compromise regime. The model was first implemented in social housing programs by São Paulo State Government, in its central area Housing PPP. It's possible to trace how new planning methods to include private participation diminishes the possibilities of attending social needs, while projects are analyzed under its profitability. In a context of economic and tax crisis, PPPs propagate as a solution in neoliberal governance. The model is growing on institutional planning practices, unfolding social and morphological outcomes - creating real estate development fronts, defining morphologies and typologies which contradict their capability to face social disparities in urban spaces. For Housing PPP, previous studies show this contradiction in the inability to guarantee provision for the most vulnerable families while simultaneously guaranteeing profit for their private partner. Once put the PPPs' tendency to spread as an instrument for social housing policies, this research proposes to watch the development of these new projects of partnerships, observing which and how and political, economic, juridical and social variables interfere in the built typology and in the definition of the demand to be attended. Therefore, implemented and new cases of PPP are chosen under State Government, as like under the São Paulo City Hall - considering the processing of its new Housing Plan. (AU)