urban land markets and the right to land in são paulo

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iii Urban Management and Development Theory Rotterdam, The Netherlands December 2012 Final Report Urban Land Markets and the Right to Land in São Paulo Lia Contrucci Fernandes de Carvalho, Brazil Supervisor: Tikvah Breimer UMDT 3

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Final Report developed for the Urban Management and Development Theory course in Erasmus University, Rotterdam, NL, in 2012. Supervisor: Tikvah Breimer

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Page 1: Urban Land Markets and the Right to Land in São Paulo

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Urban Management and Development Theory Rotterdam, The Netherlands

December 2012

Final Report Urban Land Markets and the Right to Land in São Paulo Lia Contrucci Fernandes de Carvalho, Brazil Supervisor: Tikvah Breimer UMDT 3

 

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List of Abbreviations and acronyms

AMJE Association of Jardim Edith Residents

CBD Central Business District

CPI Parliamentary Investigation Committee

GDP Gross Domestic Product

UN- HABITAT United Nations Human Settlements Programme

UO Urban Operation

ZEIS Zone of Special Social Interest

Note: Exchange Rate Conversion 1 Euro = 2.776 Brazilian Reais at 18 December 2012

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Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations 2

1. Introduction 4

2. Theoretical context 5

2.1 Locational Economics model 5

2.2 Zoning instruments 6

2.3 Land Rights in Brazil 7

2.4 The ZEIS 8

3. The slum Fires 10

3.1 The Case of Manila 10

3.2 The Case of Sao Paulo 10

3.3 The Case of Favela Jardim Edith 12

4. Application in practice 15

5. Reference List 17

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1. Introduction Sao Paulo is a city of contradictions. Concentrating 11.3 million habitants in its urban

area and 20 million in its metropolitan area is the most populated and urbanized city in Brazil. It is also responsible for the second largest GDP (gross domestic product) per capita on the country. However, one third of the city’s population live informally and without basic infrastructure (França, 2012; Franco, 2012).

The way the city has developed economically, in a very short period of time, attracted massive internal migration (Toledo, 2007). People looking for social support networks and work opportunities hoped they would find it in Sao Paulo. The growth of the city was faster than the government’s plans and betterments, leading to the way the city looks today: dense, but fragmented (Franco et al., 2006; Franco, 2012). It was not a city planned to integrate; the low-income population is excluded from the urban central area to the urban fringes, where usually there are a higher number of informal settlements. It’s a large mosaic of urban and rural plots with very low quality infrastructure where people are excluded from the city’s resources.

In the next paragraphs an analysis will evolve from the theory of Locational Economics to try to understand how this forced migration works in cities like Sao Paulo. The particular analysis on transportation cost versus land rent is the key point in this theory to understand the phenomenon that leads to the expulsion of the poor segment from the inner city to the outside areas in the city. In that sense, the land markets play a important role, creating competition between urban actors. The Highest and best use concept will be introduced in this context giving visibility to these matters.

After that, zoning is explained. This instrument is what allows the governments to make changes on the Highest and Best Use logic, allowing the control of the land use. This is achieved by constraining the land’s Bundle of Rights. After that, a brief introduction of about land use and ownership in Brazil is exposed to clarify the basis of one of the main subjects of study of this paper which is the ZEIS, a special zoning tool that has being used by Brazilian planners for the last years.

In the following chapter, to give visibility to the debate, the slum fires problem is introduced. The way these criminal fires are utilized is exemplified with the international example of Manila, the capital city of Philippines and also with the Sao Paulo’s case. The Jardim Edith slum, which was declared a ZEIS area, and is located in the south of Sao Paulo, in a very desired business district under development in Sao Paulo is selected as the main case study.

Finally, in the last chapter, theory and contents learned and having explored the case studies, this is finally where ideas are exposed. The context for the city’s recommendations is an increasing economy and a low population-growing rate. The logic that the city has being forced to deal with has to be revised and a long-term planning has to be introduced, with the main goal of a dynamic, integrated and sustainable developing in a decentralized way for the city of Sao Paulo.

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2. Theoretical context The theoretical framework chosen for this paper is the Locational Economics Model.

This chapter will explain this theory on urban land markets and introduce the basic concept of zoning and the ZEIS, a zoning instrument that is taking important role in Brazilian urban planning.

2.1 Locational economics model Cities grow in different ways around the globe. Regional or local economic, social and

political factors have high impact on the speed of the urban growth, which not only influence the pattern of land and land values, but also the intensity of site use (Balchin, Isaac & Chen, 2000). Urban expansion is inevitable and, as cities grow, the demand on urban land follows the same direction, causing scarcity on the supply of land. Competition for already scarce land leads to the rise of the price of the land and rents, expelling the low-income class, which cannot afford the high prices, to outsider areas extending the radius of the urban area and also the supply of land with a lower value. The problem is that, by moving to the fringe areas this poor population can spend less on land and rent, but they will spend more in transportation. The analysis of the two figures presented by Martim O. Smolka on a lecture at IHS, will guide to the understanding of the logic of this theory on the next paragraphs.

Transportation cost x Land rent

Figure 1 (Smolka, 2012a) Figure 2 (Smolka, 2012a)

Figure 1 gives an introduction to the relation between transportation costs and distance. An imaginary spot in the city (AB), connecting it to the city centre (O), a tangent is also created. The logic proposed by this image is that the further from the city centre (Km), the higher is the expense on transportation ($).

Figure 2 follows the same line of thinking and add the land rent into the analysis. We can understand that the cost of land rent (R) is also connected with the distance from the plot to the city centre (O) creating the same tangent, but in a different direction than the expenses in transportation (T). While in the city centre the value of the land is very high and the transportation cost is very low (A), the further apart from the centre, the land rents

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become lower and the transportation costs higher (B), meaning that what is saved in accessibility is paid in land rents and vice versa, as the blue arrow indicates.

The analysis of these figures helps on the understanding of the location of the different social classes. If we think the centre (O) as the Central Business Districts (CBD) or, in other words, the place where services and main infrastructure is provided for the population on the city, the plots close by are the most expensive ones and because of this, is where the rich class is located. The second best locations are taken by the middle class, they tend to compete with the rich class for not so desired plots in high value areas and, in many cases, also occupy housing projected for the poor class in areas close to CBD’s. There is a tendency then, to expel the low-income population to the areas less valuable where there is few or no competition for land (Evans, 1964; Sandroni, 2009; Smolka, 2012a).

Highest and Best Use Why do people compete for urban plots is a key question for understanding the Highest

and Best Use concept. With the analysis of the previous paragraphs, it becomes clear that the competition among activities is ruled by how well they will benefit from accessibility and complementarity within the urban framework (Balchin, Isaac and Chen, 2000). The competition between different social classes and also within each class makes the land prices rise.

By bidding, individual agents or firms push up land prices and rents selling parcels for the higher value offered. These deals are accomplished by extracting the most utility or profit, achieving then the Highest and Best Use to a land location or parcel. This means that land will be sold considering its potential use, what it could worth in the future. In other words, in a reasonably competitive, free market, land will be priced at the highest maximum possible among the existing and known alternatives (Evans, 1964; Smolka, 2012a).

In that direction, we can find the poor located in informal settlements in the inner city areas close to CBD’s under a lot of pressure to abandon the area they are occupying. In the bidding process they will surely lose their plots to a higher offer for the land they are inhabiting.

2.2 Zoning instruments

At a zoning lecture in November 2012 at HIS, Harvey Jacobs explained that “zoning is a public-sector, public policy approach to the management of privately owned land, where the public broadly designates how land may be used, and establishes specifications for land activity within the broad designations. The theory behind that is the idea of incompatibility of land use activities, leading to the need to separate uses from one another, creating areas, or zones, of uniform land use regulation with different types of land use activity” (Jacobs, 2012).

From the beginning, when zoning was invented, there were three basic types of zones: residential, commercial and industrial (Jacobs, 2012). This instrument evolved along with

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cities complex needs, creating ramifications inside each of this types of zones, that could help planners to better deal with the main problems that were detected.

Zoning is an important tool for planners nowadays. Besides from having a long established legal and administrative history, it is simple to formulate, simple to explain and simple to administrate. Beyond, allows fast coverage of large geographic areas and it is practically inexpensive to formulate and implement (Jacobs, 2012).

As Jacobs exposed in the same lecture, this means that it is a tool that has high probability of being implemented and this makes zoning an even more valuable tool, especially for the public sector. On the other hand, it has also weakness that are important to be considered. First, zoning is easy to modify. Thus, it should not be a tool to rely upon if the goal is long-term land use management or environmental protection. Secondly, It can draw to bribery and corruption. Since it is the Administrative Officer or Board of Administration who grant land permits, it is susceptible to illegal payments and favours. Thirdly, it requires an enforcement mechanism. Because of the financial and emotional power of land, people can ignore the rules and regulations, if they realize that there will be no sanction (Jacobs, 2012).

Bundle of Rights Land is property. Looking at property as a Bundle of Rights means that to own land is to

own rights. A land owner does not only own the rights from physical resources available on the land (soil, water, air, mineral, plants, animals, etc.) but also owns its social rights (control of access, use, sell, etc.). Property rights can be divided as one landowner can have the right of the use of surface water and do not own the underground water, for example. In that direction, if a property is a bundle of rights and rights can be separated from each other, it is the government’s role to decide what are the rights that each landowner have on his own property or land (Jacobs, 2012).

This concept is important to help on the understanding of the government’s role when dealing with zoning instruments and choosing which rights landowners will have his property or land.

2.3 Land Rights in Brazil According to the article 182 of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, the municipalities have to develop a master plan. This should work as a “basic legal instrument for urban development and property ownership. (…) The municipality is thus the principal body promoting urban policies for the orderly social development of the cities” (UN-Habitat, 2005). Through the master plan, the municipalities must develop housing regulations, norms and guidelines to the occupation and use of urban land and public and private sector cooperation for the cities development, assuring the social function of the city.

In 2001, as Edésio Fernandes exposes, a “ground-braking legal development took place in Brazil with the enactment of Federal Law no. 10.257, entitled ‘City Statute’, which aims to regulate the original chapter on urban policy introduced by the 1988 Federal Constitution and in which the ‘right to the city’ is explicitly recognized as a collective right”

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(Fernandes, 2007). It is in the Article 4 of the City Statute that the principles for determining the social function of the urban property are clarified and so, where is specified that the municipalities may create the ZEIS to guarantee the land’s social function in the city (UN-Habitat, 2005).

2.4 The ZEIS The ZEIS (zones of special social interest) is a land ownership regularisation tool first

implemented in Recife, Brazil. In Sao Paulo, was permitted by the City Statute in 2001 and incorporated and adapted to the city’s Master Plan in 2002. Thus, the municipalities may use this tool to guarantee the social function of urban land (UN-Habitat, 2005). ZEIS allows variable rules to be applied to the use and occupation of land that is already taken by informal settlements and are supposed to secure adequate housing to whom is occupying the area, legally recognizing the area as dedicated for the construction of social housing (UN-Habitat, 2005). Thus, it is correct to say that the ZEIS is a way of guaranteeing the land’s social function. As it is stated in the Constitution and in the City Statute, is also important to say that projects of law can be declared by popular initiative, consequently one local community can organize a popular movement to change local legislature and declare a ZEIS (UN-Habitat, 2005).

By changing the land use, the ZEIS takes away 90% of the land’s bundle of rights (Jacobs, 2012). Like this, it artificially intervenes on the models on the figures 1 and 2, changing the way the city would normally develop: the land markets would make the Highest and Best Use from the parcel, the real estate would sell this land with an over valuated price, to whom can afford it (high income group), expelling the low incomers from the area. By creating a ZEIS, the land has lost its economic highest and best use, and where slums exist, they will likely be urbanized (Sandroni, 2011). Dropping urban land prices and defining its use leads to no competition for plots in the inner city area and poor are not under pressure anymore, supposedly mitigating the gentrification process in areas where the urban land market has high interest. In this way, we can find the ZEIS as an externality to urban land markets because it reduces productivity in the plot or partial land and restricts supply for the city or general land. As the ZEIS take a lot of rights from its bundle by determining the land use, the price of sale cannot reach the highest anymore (Smolka, 2012a).

Because of this, there is a lot of pressure on the government from the real state, landowners and developers to suspend the ZEIS areas. As it was mentioned before, as zoning tools are easy to modify and are subjected to bribery, it is likely that the majority of the declared ZEIS are never going to be implemented (Sandroni, 2009). Not only, Carlos Morales mentioned on his lecture at IHS the exclusionary zoning as a tool to influence land markets (Morales, 2012). If we think that this zoning tool, the ZEIS, was created to prevent social exclusion is hard to think that by eliminating competition and excluding the higher class, it is a effective tool for planning a social functional city.

Specifically criticising the special zoning fundaments, Smolka mentioned during this year’s World Urban Forum in Naples that this particular type of zoning tend be ineffective because it consolidates urbanism of second class and generates a paradox of urban social inclusion in desired areas in the inner city area. This means that if special zoning demarks

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an extensive area, agglomerating social housing, a ghetto is created. Any kind of artificial homogeneity like this, is not healthy for the city. On the other hand, if the zoning is in a desired area, the social housing are usually constructed with questionable quality (Smolka, 2012b). This happens because the city lacks not only on social housing for the poor but also for the middle class. In that sense, if the units were built with good quality, the competition would shift from rich against poor to poor against middle class, since these last ones also struggle to get access to the city’s resources such as schools and services and also desire to be near their jobs, meaning the low segment of the middle class will also compete for cheap housing close to the CBD (Morales, 2012).

Concluding, the understanding of the locational economics theory, the zoning as a fundamental instrument to change the logic that markets would function if there was no intervention from the government, why and how specific tools like the ZEIS are used, creates a fundamental basis that helps us to create a picture of problem and possible solutions. In the next chapter, an international example will be mentioned and also a case study in Sao Paulo will help on the better understanding of these concepts on a practical matter and will clarify if they are really mitigating the gentrification process in the inner city areas.

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3. The Slum fires

Many can argue that because the houses in the slums are made of wood and have precarious illegal electricity connections, people attribute all fire in the slums to this conditions. Slum fires can also be caused by landowners and developers who do not want to assume the expense of a judicial process or wait for official order of demolition to regain their land (Davis, 2006). In other words, slum fires are a result of the dispute for land by the land-dwelling markets (Bonduki, 2012).

3.1 The Case of Manila Manila, capital city in the Philippines, has a reputation for slum fires that were

considered very suspicious. Mike Davis cites Jeremy Seabrook: “between February and April 1993, there were eight major burnings in the slums, including arson attacks on Smoly Mountain, Aroma Beach and Navotas. The most threatened area is close the docks where the container terminal is to be extended” (Seabrook in Davis, 2006). Davis also mention Erhard Berner when exposing that the Filipino landlords have a method called “hot demolition”. In Berner words, the method consist to chase a “kerosene-drenched burning live rat or cat – dogs die too fast – into an annoying settlement (…) a fire started this way is hard to fight as the unlucky animal can set plenty of shanties aflame before it dies” (Berner in Davis, 2006)

The area by the Manila Bay, called Baseco Compound, is under pressure by the land market in the Philippine. In 2002, a fire left 15,000 homeless and in 2004, 25,000. In 2010, there was another fire that left 4.000 people homeless in the area. (Washington Times, 2010).

3.2 The Case of Sao Paulo In Sao Paulo, the background of these criminal fires started with the construction of the

Vergueiro Avenue, in a central area of Sao Paulo that was being developed. This favela existed until 1969 when its 8,000 dwellers were evicted from the area almost in totality. The land was owned by industrial market and was subject of judicial disputes for more than twenty years. The residents from the area bought the land from people who did not really owned them. By this time, Brazil was under a dictatorship and the 1988 Constitution was not yet approved. So, there was no discussion yet on social function of land or right to the city concepts, as already discussed, fundamental to the creation of the City Statute and the ZEIS itself. There are not many records on this process of eviction but it is largely known by the population, especially the ones that remain in the area, how the government dealt with them. It was a criminality without blamed ones (Lara, 2011).

Despite nowadays this kind of news still does not reach the international media. It is gaining attention in the city. There is an interesting website that relates this slum fires with the rising land prices. In the next page, figure 3 exposes the location of the slum fires in the city of Sao Paulo and figure 4 shows the raising price of land in the Brooklin neighbourhood, south Sao Paulo.

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Only between 2008 and 2010, the fire department of Sao Paulo registered 322 slum fires and, until the present date, more than 600 fires were registered by the Civil Defence. The majority of the cases were never deeply investigated to find the real causes but the majority of them happened in slums that were already under eviction processes but were still no removed. There is real estate terrorism happening in desired central areas under development and we can find the poor segment under enormous pressure to leave their homes (Bazzan, 2012; Carvalho, 2012). After putting the slums down with the ‘hot demolition process’, in the next morning is usual to find developers tractors already working at full speed, preparing the area to a new high quality building for the wealthier segment in the city. The building are usually part of ‘re-urbanization process’ that do not predict housing to whom was already there and had to be removed. Instead, this harmed people, received blankets and standard baskets with basic food and drink that can sustain a family for not more than one week (Rolnik, 2008).

There is also the suspicious that these fires are criminal (Rolnik, 2008; Scarso, 2012). After a serious of scandals, a criminal fire CPI (Parliamentary Investigation Committee) was created by pressure from the State government of Sao Paulo in March 2012. Sadly, there were records that four politician’s political parties of the six that were leading these investigations received enormous quantity of money from the real estates as donation to their campaigns (Rolnik, 2012; Scarso, 2012) and, strangely, the investigations were dropped in December, 2012 without realising any hearing. The CPI’s final report claimed that the fires were caused by the dry weather. The strange thing is that they did not occur in favelas in the same weather conditions but outside real estate speculation areas (Fernandes, 2012).

Figure 3 maps the slum fires in the city of São Paulo (Fogo no Barraco, 2012).

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3.3 The Case of Favela Jardim Edith The Favela of Jardim Edith is located at Roberto Marinho Avenue (formerly known as

Avenida Água Espraiada), in the Brooklin neighbourhood, south region of Sao Paulo. It has a very disturbed history. Since 1972 the population living in the area had to deal with constant threats of eviction for the construction of this avenue, which began between 1995 and 1996 (Fix, 2000) and was partly finished in 2001 (Sandroni, 2009). This road is part of the Água Espraiada Urban Operation (Urban Operations are interventions in a large scale that predict urban improvements that are supposed to bring faster development to one particular area) which built the cable-stayed bridge Octavio Frias de Oliveira, finished in 2008, and is part of the road plan that connectsone of the main riverside Avenues in Sao Paulo, Marginal Pinheiros, to the main road that connects Sao Paulo to Santos, the city where the major port in Sao Paulo State is located, Imigrantes Road. Strangely, this extended avenue was located exactly where what was once the longest favela in Latin America, the Favela Jardim Edith is just a remaining part of this bigger complex.

This Urban Operation (UO) is supposed to be an extension of the Faria Lima’s business district. A whole new area to be developed meant cheap plots that would worth a lot more in the future. In this sense, the area got a lot of attention from the real estates, elevating the value of the land in the area. Speculators, landowners and developers wanted to quickly remove the poor segment from the land occupied by the poor that suddenly became really interesting and the process of removing more than 50.000 poor people that were occupying the parcels that interested the land markets in the slums along the Agua Espraiada Avenue were initiated. In the first stage, the population to be relocated had three alternatives: receive compensation of R$1.500,00 (US$ 718,05 in 18/12/12) which was not enough even to buy another shed in a slum; receive a ticket back to the city that they were born; or the opportunity to buy with monthly payments that would last 25 years, a social house unit in the east zone of Sao Paulo. The plan predicted to create social housing inside the operation perimeter to all the dwellers living in the area that eventually would have to be relocated. What happened in reality is that the majority got no support from the government and went to live in some other slums. A great part from the Jardim Edith residents were relocated to a settlement on the margins of the Billings dam, acting against the environmental protection laws. The dwellers of the former Jardim Edith created in the new area the Jardim Edith II (Fix, 2001). Sandroni mentions, “this was the first stage of the gentrification process” (Sandroni, 2011, p. 363).

The eviction process by that time, is reported with scenes of terror. Approaching the population with eviction orders that obligated families to leave their homes within few days; keeping the population under inhuman conditions during the relocation processes; cutting water and light connections; putting tractors and trucks surrounding the area to make psychological pressure (Fix, 2000); and in some extreme cases, the criminal fires were used as a solution to expel the population from this area, when they were refusing to abandon their homes. Next pages, in figure 4, we can see the line of fires in the Roberto Marinho Avenue and in figure 5, the graphic showing the rising price of the land, showing a clear relation between the fires and the price of land, which explemplify already discussed land

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market theory and concepts that make this favela a desired area and put the poor living in the are under a lot of pressure.

Figure 4 shows the line of fires along Roberto Marinho Avenue (Fogo no Barraco, 2012).

After 2001, with the City Statute, the picture changed. The Jardim Edith was declared a ZEIS after massive popular movement that were organized by the Favela’s remaining dwellers (Fix, 2001), mitigating the slum problem and impeding the expulsion of the remaining slums. However, during the master plan revision in 2007, there was an attempt to change the legislature and eliminate the ZEIS title in Jardim Edith (Sandroni, 2011). Fortunately, for the slum residents, this attempt did not pass and the area remained a ZEIS, becoming one of the first ones in Sao Paulo that actually, after 40 years of struggle, are being relocated to very good quality social housing units exactly in the area they were occupying (Associação de Moradores do Jardim Edith, 2012).

It becomes very clear after these examples that criminal acts against the slums in the inner city areas are related to the rising price of land. These acts intend to expel poor population from the central areas so that the plots are available to bidding and developing to high-class housing, which can afford paying for the highest and best use of one parcel. It is part of the government to make sure that the social function of the land is assured but it does not happen without popular pressure.

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Figure 5 shows how the price of land raised along time, in the Brooklin neighbourhood (Fogo no Barraco, 2012).

Despite the conquer seen by the Jardim Edith’s dwellers, only 5% of the slum population were actually relocated to social housing units provided by the municipality inside the UO perimeter. Before the government approved the City Statute, guaranteeing the social function of the property and the population’s right to the city, the slum dwellers were treated with negligence. So it is right to say that the ZEIS, permitted by the city statute is acting as an important tool for the population to use. In the same way that it is easy to be declared an implemented, as a zoning tool, as mentioned before, it is easy to be modified and is subjected to bribery. We could see this happening in 2007 when there was a unsuccessful attempt to exclude the Jardim Edith ZEIS, when surely there were lobbing by the land market actors interested on the plots occupied by the slum.

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4. Application in practice To think of recommendations for a city like Sao Paulo is an enourmous responsibility. Now that the city praticaly estabilized its growth rate and a solid macroeconomic and social policies are implemented. To think ahead is to think on how to reorganize the fragments of city that were left by a authoritarian way of planning which did not had the objective of integration neither social equality. Citizens in need of help from public authorities, had and still have to fight for themselves as the city turns its back on them.

In that sense, the ZEIS were only implemented in the Favela Jardim Edith because of massive popular pressure, after almost half a decade. People who lived in this harmed favela got together to fight for a better solution, but this is a case in a million. There are still a lot of favelas in Sao Paulo suffering with criminal fires because of perfect mix of high speculation interests and powerful real estate in one hand and the lack of the enforcement by the public power with bribed public actors and the municipality using the zoning tools to solve deal with problems that should be treated as long-term problems so, should not rely upon, as it was previously recommended by Jacobs. The case of the special zoning is even more delicate because of the powerful land market actors, the highly desired plots involved and slum dwellers that might be occupying them.

The UOs and the ZEISs are interim solutions for long-term problems. By creating the Urban Operations, the municipality is only feeding the logic of having one central business district were all the city has to move towards it to find the basic resources that people look inside a city. Of course, the speculation and real estate will immediately focus in the available or slum occupied lands. Declaring a ZEIS, is mitigating the problem and not dealing with the roots of it and here is where lies one of my main critiques.

If mixed zoning were applied, guaranteeing a percentage of the areas for each kind of use and social class, we would not only secure the social function of the land and the right to the city of each and every citizen, but we would create areas that act as sustainable developing zones. The mixed zoning would create the city’s resources that its citizens look for. They would not only have basic infrastructure such as water, electricity and sewerage systems but jobs, schools and all kinds of services that people look when the reach for central areas in the city. In other words, we would be creating Central Business Districts poles in various parts of the city, so that Sao Paulo’s residents don’t have to reach for services and resources only in the inner city area. This would create such a pattern in the city that would not only change the logic of expenses on land and transportation in the city, but would improve the city’s historic traffic jams and also develop areas that are forgotten and perfectly developable.

In that sense, the huge investments made in areas like the Agua Espraiada Urban Operation, could be used to change land use and develop many small or medium areas in the city, instead of just a large one, creating in a more scattered way. It would also generates more possibilities of creating more than one public and private partnership when developing the areas and it would also involve more than one sub-municipality, which would lower competition and no cooperation among them, and would decentralize actions, lowering the bribery and under-the-table payments.

For that to happen it is necessary that the way politics is made in the city changes. In the present days, despite there were a lot of good changes; the non-implementation of policies is compromising the city’s development as a whole. Also in this direction, the lack of credibility is also a problem, so to think of solutions to rise that might also result on people

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paying more taxes, which would lead to more money in disposal for these kinds of betterments.

Concluding, there is no magical solution for fighting gentrification and assure the social function of the city. It is a process that involves many urban actors and the proper utilization of policy and zoning tools and a clear and long-term goal to develop the city in a sustainable way from the part of the municipality.

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Reference List

Alonso, W., 1964. Location and land use: Towards a general theory of land rent. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Associação de Moradores do Jardim Edith, 2012. SP inicia obras de conjunto habitacional na região da Berrini. CBO Blog report. [online] Available at: http://jardimedith.blogspot.com.br/2011/02/reportagem-sptv-do-dia-02022010.html [Accessed 1 December, 2012].

Balchin, P.N., Isaac, D. & Chen, J., 2000. Spatial structure of urban areas. In Urban Economics: a global perspective. New York: Palgrave. Pp. 80-122.

Bazzan, A., 2012. A CPI dos incendios em favelas é uma farsa. In Caros Amigos. [online] Available at: http://carosamigos.terra.com.br/index/index.php/cotidiano/2610-a-cpi-dos-incendios-em-favelas-e-uma-farsa

Bonduki, N., 2012. Habitação: especulação e moradia. In Carta Maior. [online] Available at: http://www.cartamaior.com.br/templates/materiaMostrar.cfm?materia_id=19614 [Accessed 10 December, 2012]

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