Public-private partnerships and the new urban frontiers: housing financialization, homelessness, and urban security in São Paulo downtown

• Grant number: 22/13105-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: March 07, 2023
• End date: September 06, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Amelia Luisa Damiani
• Grantee: Ariel Machado Godinho
• Supervisor: Ruth Gilmore
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: City University of New York (CUNY), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/02287-1 - Space mobilization in the central area of São Paulo and the elements of critical urbanization: the PPP Habitacional incidence on the Luz region from the so-called Cracolândia, BP.MS

Abstract

The ongoing master's research investigates the incidence of public-private partnerships in the Luz region, São Paulo downtown, focusing on the interconnection between housing financialization, homelessness, and urban security that constitutes a current urban frontier dynamic. For at least three decades, the Luz region has been distinguished by concentrating low-income dwellings and a transient population framed as crack users, composed mainly of homeless people and associated arbitrarily with drug sales and minor crimes. Since 2014, their "regeneration" promise has been redefined by the PPP Habitacional SP Lote 1 S/A, a specific purpose society for affordable housing provision based on housing financialization, expansion of social indebtedness, and public land concession. The Luz region case collaborates to grasp the qualities of public-private partnership as a legal/financial/real estate arrangement and the role of state-sanctioned violence in urban restructuring processes. This project proposes a research internship at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics (CPCP) of the City University of New York (CUNY) under the supervision of Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, intended to enhance the debate around contemporary urban frontier dynamics in dialogue with theoretical intersections between Marxist critical geography and black critical theory. Bibliographical research and interdisciplinary academic engagement as a visiting scholar will be complemented by contact with scholars dedicated to related subjects and activist networks based in New York City. (AU)