Articulações entre a produção do espaço urbano e a gestão do social: agentes e escalas na produção do PMCMV em São Carlos/SP

Abstract

This work copes with different processes of urban space production (“down” and “up”) and their relations to the land use, spatial planning, and to the social arrangement found in peripheral and poor areas – resulting of the integrated actions of the state, the capital, and other distinct social actors, such as public-private partnerships – which give sense to the local everyday life, specifically in the contemporaneous periphery of the city of Sao Carlos (state of Sao Paulo, Brazil). This thesis aimed to comprehend from the Federal Programa Minha Casa Minha Vida, Class 1(PMCMV-1), the urban space production and its processes of social arrangement in their varied scales, in the neighborhoods Jd. Zavaglia and Eduardo Abdelnur, through the state and its interrelations with other agents: real estate, non-profit sector, and residents. Also, processes of appropriation and reproduction of daily urban life by these residents, in the physical and symbolic dimensions, were considered. This study was carried through three main scales: federal, municipal, and local. In the federal scale, it was observed the juridical composition of the Program, the ways of production, and its target market. Specifically, the conceptual structure behind the indicators related to the habitational deficits and demands, and in which way they are related to the program productive chain and, consequently, to the urban space production and social arrangement, were analysed. The same structure with respect to the housing indicators was observed under the municipal scale. We wanted to understand why the municipality had produced an unexpected high number of residences though the PMCMV. Complementarily, we identified how the public and private agents acted towards the materialization of the studied neighborhoods. Lastly, in the local scale, ethnographic incursions were conducted in the two mentioned neighborhoods, through formal and informal interviews. Thereby, we made an analytical effort to think and understand the role of the PMCMV and its relations to the urban space, to the social arrangement, to private and non-profit sectors, and, finally, to the assisted population, addressing to comprehend: the current state plan under the neoliberalism and lulismo contexts, and the contours or limits of the public-private, legal-illegal, formal and informal relations. Some of the main research findings are: (i) the PMCMV presents a “super production by demand”, aiming to meet the real estate interests rather than the housing deficit; (ii) the public and private agents seems to work with harmony with the market needs at both national and municipal levels; (iii) the social policies tend to privatizing their financings and outsourcing their actions, leading to a private social management and a private urban space production through private institutions, such as general contractors and NGOs; (iv) the private management, sometimes called as mediation agent, is imbued with moralization, depoliticization of the state, and is accompanied with the introduction of business management practices; (v) the access to the social rights seems to be understood from a chance or individual merit point of view; and, finally (vi) a neoliberal ideology seems to be present in some levels of contemporary life, from social politics to the production of the neoliberal individual, presenting a continuous dynamic and porous infection between the spheres.