Real estate financialization and the State: from local policies to financial instruments

• Grant number: 23/10069-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: February 01, 2024
• End date: January 19, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Urban and Regional Planning - Fundamentals of Urban and Regional Planning
• Principal Investigator: Maria Beatriz Cruz Rufino
• Grantee: Isadora Fernandes Borges de Oliveira
• Supervisor: Manuel Aalbers
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Leuven, Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium
• Associated to the scholarship: 20/15267-6 - Popular mega-ventures: new agents, strategies and restructuring of space in contemporary São Paulo, BP.DR

Abstract

This Research Project guides the activities carried out during the Research Internship abroad at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Manuel Aalbers. The objective is to deepen the analysis of the relationships between real estate developers and the State, and how these relationships have impacted property development both in practical and theoretical terms. The initial studies on the financialization of housing in Brazil indicated a radical transformation in the real estate sector through the intense movement of initial public offerings by major developers (from 2005 to 2007). While enabling new levels of accumulation, these transformations have expanded the economic and political power of these agents, increasingly consolidating them as interest groups in shaping urban and financing policies. Thus, the research will investigate how the configurations of power and influence of these agents in the face of State authorities during the last decades point to the emergence of new arrangements and productive strategies in property development. This path indicates that the housing financialization process is deepening and marking a new stage of transformation in real estate development. The project will emphasize the transformations in the relationships between developers and state authorities within local urban policy and the mobilization of financial instruments that have facilitated real estate development financing, considering the growing relevance of the production of fictitious capital in property development. Additionally, it seeks to (i) advance the critique of the State's role in the capitalist production of space in contemporary times, (ii) unveil the specificities and meanings of these relationships for the overall process of financialization of housing and its particular forms in the context of developing countries, and (iii) discuss the contradictory movement of mobilizing the goals of "social inclusion" by major players in real estate development.