Survival Strategies: The Production of Popular Territories and the City

• Grant number: 24/02732-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Urban and Regional Planning
• Principal Investigator: Isadora de Andrade Guerreiro
• Grantee: Gabrielle Natalie Gusmão Gomes de Araújo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research is centered on the production of popular territoriality, beginning with the examination of repertoires, resources, and strategies employed by self-builder residents in their construction sites. The approach is justified by the comprehension of self-construction as a prism enabling the contemplation of urban space production in its interplay with the State, social movements, agents of the "Informal Land Market" (ABRAMO, 2009), as well as organized groups, university affiliates, and political adherents. Consequently, it originates from the construction site, acknowledging in this space the same agents and social, economic, and political dynamics that compose the framework influencing urban space in contemporary popular territories. This form is distinct from the one portraying them as homogeneous spaces in their voids, where development supposedly occurs on the periphery of the State.This manner of urban production is acknowledged as a process in which the permanence in the occupied space is linked to the mobilization of tactics indicating the intensification of "viração" (TELLES, 2006) in a context of "permanent transitoriness" (ROLNIK, 2015). Within this context, the self-construction of houses and cities is molded by strategies allowing for permanence and attempts at generational accumulation. It is not tied to the absence or lack (of the State, of resources), but rather to the coordination of numerous repertoires and resources mobilized according to the prevailing circumstances. The objective is, in this manner, to reposition the issue of popular territory production as a prism for critiquing the dichotomy between formality and informality (ROLNIK, 2015), reconsidering the role of urban planning in the present moment.