Voters, volunteers and collaborators: public-private relations and the new forms of peripheral urbanization in São Paulo's South Zone

• Grant number: 24/02319-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: May 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Urban and Regional Planning
• Principal Investigator: Isadora de Andrade Guerreiro
• Grantee: Ana Luiza Vieira Gonçalves
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 23/12851-7 - Evictions Observatory: interdisciplinary dimensions of risk in times of climate change and housing crisis, AP.TEM

Abstract

This research project is based on a series of ethnographic incursions into favelas and occupations in the South Zone of the city of São Paulo in order to develop the hypothesis that changes in the dynamics of favela urbanization, added to accommodations and transformations in the political and economic spheres, have the effect of a process we are calling neo-clientelism. The notion of neo-clientelism is based on the Lefebvrian notion of the violence of urbanization, in which it is understood that urbanization processes involve a set of forms of violence in order to be effective, whether they are linked to the dimension of property, urban planning or everyday life. As such, the advance of urbanization also involves violent practices, whether on the part of public authorities or local agents. Considering the existence, at present, of three logics through which urbanization processes can take place - namely: (1) public urbanization processes; (2) "drop by drop" urbanization or self-urbanization; (3) private urbanization processes - the project aims to develop the notion of neo-clientelism, understanding that this updating of public agents' ways of doing things in peripheral territories works not only as an operator of urbanization forms, but is also a constituent part of its contemporary versions. (AU)