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The Informal COMP‐FUSED City: Market and Urban Structure in Latin American Metropolises
... In the Brazilian case, this would include spaces such as irregular peripheral subdivisions, favelas, and cortiços (housing tenements). These areas tend to evidence small-scale and incremental processes of occupation and construction, providing housing to poor segments of the population who are unable to access it via other means (Abramo 2019). It is important to note that these processes often involve speculative, rent-seeking and vote-buying activities by elites, including wealthy landowners, politicians and others, and are not only driven by the poor acting autonomously. ...
... However, collectively, several factors combine to preserve favelas primarily within the lower circuit. Crucially, this includes insecure property titling which makes the purchase of favela homes more risky than other types of property (Abramo 2019). However, there are also other factors which tend to discourage entry into the favela housing market for those who have other options available to them (Richmond 2018). ...
... However, they are typically also home to highly vulnerable populations that include large numbers of homeless people, as well as residents of cortiços (informally rented tenements) and building occupations coordinated by housing movements. As Abramo (2019) has shown, at the urban scale it is possible to identify housing sub-markets for the poor, who make trade-offs between factors like location, tenure and living space. In contrast to distant peripheral subdivisions, cortiços and precarious forms of housing in historic centres are a more viable option for groups who prioritise central location over other factors (e.g. ...
Recent research in Latin America, and our own analysis of Brazilian cities, indicate that aspects of rent gap theory – in particular, the assumption that strong links exist between rent gaps and gentrification – do not fully account for observed empirical conditions. Drawing on Milton Santos' theory of “two circuits” of urban economies in the global South, we seek to develop an expanded framework better suited to explaining the Latin American context. Specifically, we argue that important socio‐spatial processes combine to embed what Santos called the “lower circuit” in certain parts of the city. This “territorialisation” of space by the lower circuit impedes the entry of the upper circuit, thus constraining expected rent gap capture and gentrification. We argue that only by taking both circuits into account, and considering how they become territorialised in urban space, can we properly grasp the relationship between rent gaps and gentrification in Latin American cities.
... These differences are enumerated in this section as five key factors that, we propose, determine the manner in which social housing has developed in the Global South. In analyzing these factors, we draw from the following key scholars and their theories: S. Schindler's (2017) study of the distinctive types of human settlements in the Global South 6 ; Abramo's (2016Abramo's ( , 2019Abramo's ( , 2020 concept of urban informality; A. Roy's (2017) epistemological approach to urban informality; and J. Robinson's (2006) concept of ordinary cities in the Global South. ...
... Informality is a counter-hegemonic process with rules and values quite different to formal planning prescriptions Midheme & Moulaert, 2013;Prathiwi & Moulaert 2017;Leontidou, 2014). Abramo (2020) finds that there are established institutions in informal markets that might be considered subordinate to formal institutions but which (re)produce some (informal) commercial practices of buying, selling or renting. These institutions facilitate transactions and guarantee the robustness of inter-temporal and inter-generational contracts. ...
... This contrasts with housing provision programs in the Global South which mostly have to address the informality of settlements. In these countries, interventions in housing markets consist of indirect policy interventions such as the upgrading of sites and services as well reforms of the housing funding schemes (Keivani & Werna, 2001;Charlton & Meth, 2017;Abramo, 2020). ...
Special issue of PlaNext on Planning Theories from the global South
... These conditions made the CSP earn the name of "city for the few'' [34], highlighting its exclusionary character. The overall pattern has also been called "Comp-Fused" [35], meaning it combines extreme concentration (and congestion) in the metropolitan core, with large swathes of diffuse growth in the periphery. ...
Developing countries’ megacities, characterised by dense populations and socioeconomic disparities, often face high levels of pollutants, mainly from vehicle emissions. Poor air quality can lead to a range of public health problems which in turn, need to be addressed by public policies. The main goal of this article is to examine the impact of public policies and the influence of transport modes on air pollution of three districts from the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, in Brazil: Pinheiros, Parque Dom Pedro II and Taboão da Serra. The method was held through a comparative analysis, which in turn, took into account urban indicators, urban mobility data and pollutants levels (CO and NOx). These data were collected from the 2007 and 2017 São Paulo Metrô Origin and Destination Surveys and the Air Quality Database of the Environmental Company of the State of São Paulo. As key findings, the three study areas’ pollutant concentrations presented a downward trend from 2007 to 2017 as the same time there was an increase in the public transport and non-motorized transport modes. However, it is important to highlight the confluence of the state and federal public policies occuring at the same period such as PRONCOVE, Rodoanel and the Yellow Subway Line. The identified socio-environmental disparities in the urban realm highlight the importance of localised analyses in order to reveal problems and opportunities to get a better response in terms of urban mobility and air quality. Thus, the perpetuation of constant policy’s updates and interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial.
... These conditions made the CSP earn the name of "city for the few'' [34], highlighting its exclusionary character. The overall pattern has also been called "Comp-Fused" [35], meaning it combines extreme concentration (and congestion) in the metropolitan core, with large swathes of diffuse growth in the periphery. ...
This preprint has been published in Discover Cities.
Girotti, C., Oliveira, M. C. Q. D., Sato, A. E., Chiquetto, J. B., Santos, A. P., de Miranda, R. M., Mülfarth, R. C. K., Shimomura, A. R. P., & Lopez, J. M. R. (2024). Urban mobility and air pollution at the neighbourhood scale in the Megacity of São Paulo, Brazil. Discover Cities, 1(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44327-024-00016-4
You can also find it in Research Gate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383261388_Urban_mobility_and_air_pollution_at_the_neighbourhood_scale_in_the_Megacity_of_Sao_Paulo_Brazil
... These differences are enumerated in this section as five key factors that, we propose, determine the manner in which social housing has developed in the Global South. In analyzing these factors, we draw from the following key scholars and their theories: S. Schindler's (2017) study of the distinctive types of human settlements in the Global South 6 ; Abramo's (2016Abramo's ( , 2019Abramo's ( , 2020 concept of urban informality; A. Roy's (2017) epistemological approach to urban informality; and J. Robinson's (2006) concept of ordinary cities in the Global South. ...
This paper addresses the problem of accessing decent and affordable housing in the Global South, where the housing need is, in general, more problematic than in the Global North. The paper first identifies five distinctive characteristics of housing systems in the Global South as compared to those in the Global North. These include: (a) the diverse facets of global financialization; (b) the role of the developmentalist state; (c) the importance of informality; (d) the decisive role of the family; and (e) the rudimentary welfare systems. Given these features, the paper reflects on the concept and practices of social housing, particularly their appropriateness to deal with the housing problem in the Global South. The paper then addresses the question of whether the social housing approach is relevant for solving the contemporary housing needs in the Global South. It argues that social housing, redefined to better encompass the distinctive characteristics of housing systems in the Global South, is indeed a useful policy approach and can play a decisive role in satisfying unmet housing needs. Such an approach needs to take into account the great role of informality and family support systems and develop appropriate funding instruments and modes of institutionalization protecting housing rights and the quality of life.
The relationship between the state and informal land development in Global South metropolises has yet not received much attention in urban studies. Concerning that knowledge gap, this paper investigates how the state regulates and inspects irregular and clandestine land subdivisions in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (MRBH). A mixed-methods approach, focused on the inner workings of the land development control policy led by the MRBH Agency between 2009 and 2018, provides new evidence of the relationships between inspectors, developers, and prosecutors, among other actors. By delving deep into the intricate nexus between a changing regulatory landscape and the bureaucratic, street-level, and everyday enforcement practices by officials, the paper reveals how land development control, directly and indirectly, shapes informal land development in the MRBH. Particularly, it sheds light on how land development control unrolls through a contradictory combination of overregulation on one side and tolerance on the other. In light of this, I argue that, as land development control evolves without effectively tackling the land question and the structural drivers of informality, the state becomes paradoxically entangled in the production of the same forms of informality it is expected to curb. Therefore, land development control is better understood as a fragile and ambivalent state compromise between the need to regulate urban expansion and market-driven informal urbanisation. By creating opportunities for rent extraction and capital accumulation which are explored by informal land developers, the state has been crucial for property-led informal urbanisation in metropolitan Brazil.
Recent decades have seen a rising interest in the peripheral nature of urbanization processes. While research has put the spotlight on large‐scale, transnational and financialized real estate actors, less attention has been paid to informal land developers. Addressing that knowledge gap, this article underscores the key role of land developers in informal urbanization through a case study of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. A mixed‐methods approach provides new evidence of the widespread, variegated and spatially uneven development of irregular and clandestine subdivisions over the last two decades, revealing a heterogeneous landscape of informal developers. The study shows that informal development has been shifting from the typical popular and peripheral subdivision, which provided precarious yet affordable housing for working‐class families, to new forms of speculative investment for the middle and upper classes, such as country homes and gated communities in peri‐urban and rural areas. I argue that this shift is explained by both national and local changing regulatory frameworks and processes of economic restructuring, urban neoliberalism and housing financialization in the periphery. In light of this, I propose the notion of ‘property‐led informality’ to refer to a regime of informal urbanization increasingly dominated by commodified, rentiership and speculative land dynamics in the sprawling metropolises of the global South.
This paper describes the nature of low-income housing markets for renting and sharing in Latin America and the Caribbean. It reviews the importance of non-owner housing markets associated with early urbanization from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1940s when rental tenements of different types—often slums—predominated as migrant and worker housing. The rapid rise of informal settlements and self-building from the 1950s onwards inverted the tenurial status of low-income housing markets: “ownership” eclipsed rent-ing, and whether informal or formal, became the primary mode of state sup-ported housing production. However, as informal access to land slowed in the 1980s and 1990s, so renting and sharing began to emerge as subsidiary and increasingly important housing market alternatives, such that many cities are now showing a relative and significant decline in home ownership levels. Much of this rise in renting and sharing has occurred as a result of densification in the older, now consolidated, barrios that formed in the 1970s-90s. Despite this turnaround in low-income housing production and opportunities, public policy for non-ownership remains almost non-existent. Drawing upon de-tailed case studies, this article reviews the contemporary nature and dynamics of rental and shared housing across the region, and offers a series of policy approaches and instruments to promote both the supply and demand for non-ownership housing, primarily targeting the poor in the coming two decades.
El presente informe expone las características y tendencias de la segregación residencial en las ciudades de América Latina, sus causas y consecuencias, el estado de la investigación en este campo, y las políticas que podrían controlar la segregación. Hacia el final, sugiere las implicancias que este panorama podría tener para los esfuerzos que está desarrollando el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) en materia de focalización y eficiencia de las políticas sociales urbanas. La segregación es un fenómeno compuesto cuya dimensión más claramente positiva, la concentración espacial del grupo social bajo estudio, es también la que más podría ayudar a mejorar la focalización y eficiencia de las políticas sociales. Por otra parte, el informe concluye destacando la contribución más global que las políticas sociales pueden hacer en materia de control de la segregación, más allá de estrategias específicas de coordinación territorial.
Estudio de la tenencia irregular de suelo urbano en la ciudad fronteriza de Tijuana y de su proceso de legalización. Los objetivos del estudio fueron establecer la relación esta irregularidad con algunos procesos urbanos, así como la revisión de la intervención del sector público en la formalización de los predios. Con base en los resultados, se ofrecen recomendaciones para mejorar la capacidad institucional de respuesta para la regularización de predios y para atajar el crecimiento urbano irregular.
This book explores the dynamics that have accompanied the implementation of large-scale Urban Development Projects (UDPs) in nine European cities within the European Union (EU). It contributes to the analysis of the relationship between urban restructuring and social exclusion/integration in the context of the emergence of the European-wide ‘new’ regimes of urban governance. These regimes reflect the reawakening of neo-liberal policy and the rise of a New Urban Policy favouring private investments and deregulation of property and labour markets. The selected UDPs further reflect global pressures and changing systems of local, regional, and/or national regulation and governance. These projects, while being decidedly local, capture global trends and new national and local policies as they are expressed in particular institutional forms and strategic practices. The large scale urban interventions were deliberately chosen as reflections of a particular hegemonic and dominant expression of urban policy, as pursued during the 1990s. The book provides a panoramic view of urban change in some of Europe’s greatest cities. The nine case-studies include: The Europeanization of Brussels, The Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, the new financial district in Dublin, the science-university-technology complex ‘Adlershof’ in Berlin, the 1998 World Expo in Lisbon, Athens’s bid to stage the Olympic Games, Vienna’s Donau City, Copenhagen’s Oresund project, and Naples’ new business district. These case-studies testify to the unshakable belief the city elites hold in the healing effects that the production of new urban mega-projects and -events has on their city’s vitality and development potential. The book also analyses the down side of this development in terms of social exclusion, the formation of new urban elites, and the consolidation of less democratic forms of urban governance. The principal aim is to show how the production of these new urban spaces is actually also part of the production of a new polity, a new economy, and new forms of living urban life that are not very promising for a socially harmonious and just future for metropolitan urban Europe.
La política de vivienda social en Chile es considerada un éxito. En los últimos quince años la producción masiva de viviendas ha logrado reducir el déficit habitacional, y muchos gobiernos de América Latina están imitando su modelo de financiamiento. Sin embargo, esta política exitosa ha terminado creando nuevos problemas urbanos y sociales: segregación, fragmentación, inseguridad, hacinamiento. En consecuencia, se plantea que una política de vivienda social sensata debe hoy incorporar nuevos criterios, relacionados fundamentalmente con la calidad de viviendas, la localización de los conjuntos construidos y la movilidad residencial de los beneficiarios.Chilen social housing policy is considered a success. During the last fifteen years the massive housing production has managed to reduce housing deficit, and many Latin American governments are imitating it financing model. However, this succesfull policy has ended up by creating new urban and social problems: segregation, fragmentation, insecurity, overcrowding. Consequently, it is pointed that a proper housing policy must currently include new criteria, mainly related to the quality of the product, the locating of the built neighborhoods and beneficiaries residential mobility.
Mercado inmobiliario y la producción de las ciudades en América Latina
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