Housing in the urban intervention project of central São Paulo: housing solution or incentives to real estate production?

• Grant number: 20/07925-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2020
• End date: August 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Urban and Regional Planning - Methods and Techniques of Urban and Regional Planning
• Principal Investigator: Paula Freire Santoro
• Grantee: Pedro Del Bel Pires
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research intends to understand the housing policy proposed by the Urban Intervention Project - Central Sector (PIU-SC) of São Paulo, identifying which urbanistic instruments enable urbanistic incentives, how they were proposed and operate - if they mobilize building rights, public land or resources -, how and when these can be combined. In this way, this study seeks to comprehend the proposed model for housing and predict its impacts on the region, indicating the possible effects of its implementation to the observed housing necessities framework. The research will investigate a hypothesis that indicates a shift of the initial policy proposals and of the housing instruments applied. In the beginning of the institutional discussions regarding the PIU-SC, Special Zones of Social Interest (ZEIS) were demarcated and debating strategies for them were presented, which subsequently did not seem evident throughout the bill's drafted text. With an exploratory aspect, a case study of an Urban Intervention Project in a central area will be developed through an interpretation of urban and housing realities, a follow up of the bill's writing and debating process and interviews with involved actors, resulting on a reading of the popular territory compared to the PIU's proposals regarding housing incentives. Thus, this study intends to assess whether and how the PIU-SC articulates with the ZEIS and the housing proposals that justify the intended transformation.