Script, rehearsal and action: the mobilization of public land through urban restructuring instruments in São Paulo

• Grant number: 23/16414-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: May 01, 2024
• End date: March 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Urban and Regional Planning - Methods and Techniques of Urban and Regional Planning
• Principal Investigator: Paula Freire Santoro
• Grantee: Amanda Silber Bleich
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The use of public land is a growing dispute in urban contexts, especially when there is a shortage of properties in densely occupied cities. As much as they are essential for the State's institutional functioning and for the execution of public policies, the growing trend in municipal management, as well as at the state and federal levels, is the treatment of public land as financial assets, subjecting them to real estate-financial logics. In 2001, the CPI of Public Areas highlighted the need to formulate a management plan for public land that valued its social use, reversing the logic used of "punctual" concessions that occurred in the municipality, acting as a sort of script for the changes to come. Encouraged by this process, the 2002 Strategic Master Plan intended the formulation of such a plan, and at the same time rehearsed the formulation of urban instruments that encouraged the entry of financial capital into the city's urban dynamics. In 2014, the revision of the Master Plan seems to mark a new form of action in the mobilization of public land in the municipality, not only reinforcing the entry of capital into the production of space, but anchoring urban transformation in the economic exploitation of public areas in partnership with the private initiative. The present research aims to understand the changes in the form of privatization/destatization of public land in São Paulo during the last two decades, through the study of regulatory instruments that deal with urban restructuring through the mobilization of public land.