Insurgent Regeneration: Spatial Practices of Citizenship in the Rehabilitation of Inner-City São Paulo

Abstract

The city center of São Paulo, Brazil, has increasingly become a key site for local housing movements to challenge the rules and practices of differentiated citizenship in urban Brazil. This is in line with Sassen’s analysis arguing that the last two decades have seen an increasingly urban articulation of global struggles, and a growing use of urban space to make political claims. Organized vacant buildings and occupations led by social movements in the center of São Paulo are prominent examples of urban spaces being appropriated to advance the claims of otherwise marginalized urban subjects. In the face of rising inequalities and social and spatial divisions across the city, squatted buildings emerge as a space of negotiation with political consequences at various times and scales. Apart from acquiring a symbolic value in the debate over regeneration and gentrification processes in the inner-city area of São Paulo, vacant building occupations are simultaneously intended by their proponents as a means to provide shelter to those in need, experiment with alternative ways of producing low-income housing in well-located urban areas, and contribute to wider demands for urban reform across Brazil. This article explores in detail the spatial practices of individuals and groups occupying a building known as Ocupação Marconi. It focuses on the production of the building being seen as a device for advancing alternative formulations of citizenship, and discusses the implication of this interpretation for a renewed definition of the notion and practice of urban regeneration.

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