INNER CITY CENTRAL AREAS AND HOUSING MOVEMENTS: TRANSGRESSION, CONFRONTATIONS, AND LEARNING

Abstract

The enormous processes of building cities that took place in Brazil for decades in the twentieth century left behind a trail of precarious urbanization, violence and inequities. The peripheries of metropolitan areas and large cities have spread, while areas of environmental preservation were occupied given the lack of urban and housing policies. The central areas of many cities lost a permanent population during the latter decades, despite their potential from the point of view of job opportunities, services and inclusion. Given the demand for housing, the urban movements have promoted organized occupations of land and blocks in well-located regions with the aim of pressuring governments for housing policies, and denouncing properties that do not meet a social function. These processes have been linked to insurgent citizenship, transgressive citizenship-building mechanisms and building learning process from these confrontations and struggles, according to some cases described in this paper.