Vazios urbanos edificados potencialmente ociosos em Ribeirão Preto

Abstract

Brazil has approximately 11.4 million vacant dwellings (12.6% of the total housing stock), while the housing deficit reaches 6.2 million units. In this context, urban voids represent a major challenge for urban planning, encompassing unused or underutilized buildings, vacant lots, and disused properties, often located in urbanized areas already served by infrastructure. The 1988 Federal Constitution and the City Statute established legal instruments to address property vacancy and underutilization, including Compulsory Parceling, Building, or Utilization (PEUC), the Progressive Urban Property Tax (IPTU Progressivo no Tempo), and expropriation measures. Against this backdrop, this study analyzed the territorial distribution of potentially vacant built properties in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, a medium-sized municipality with approximately 700,000 inhabitants and a predominantly urban population. The research applied the Methodology for Identifying Potentially Vacant Properties (MIIPO), developed by LabHab/FAU-USP and Lepur/UFABC. The Multicriteria Idleness Index (IMO) revealed three main territorial patterns: the emptying of consolidated centralities, especially the Central Quadrilateral and the Cultural Protection Zone of Bonfim Paulista; idleness associated with socioeconomic vulnerability in the northern and western regions; and idleness in valued areas, associated with the displacement of demand toward recent, dispersed, and private developments, as well as with signs of speculative retention.