The adverse outlying locations and lack of infrastructure that characterize recently built low-income housing developments motivated the elaboration of this doctoral thesis. This way of producing the built environment takes place in the city of São Paulo as well, impacting its urban design and the real estate market.
Although it is been occurring chronically since the 1970s with the acceleration of urbanization, this process has intensified increasingly until the present days. Reality was once different, but this is barely noticeable. Renowned examples of architecture and urbanism are not taken as reference for the current development model.
This work studies some achievements of Brazilian housing production in the period between the 1930s and 1964, highlighting some defining elements of its notorious quality. The growing complexity of the urban environment leads to deeper discussions among those responsible for housing production. Thus, we present here the concept of an Urban Development Inducing Project with the ability to articulate solutions for the city. We also suggest the use of the Urban Metaproject tool to contribute towards the realization of Inducing Projects that give rise to more interesting and promising dynamics for urban development. In addition to Brazilian projects, we also study exemplary foreign experiences.
In Brazil, the Vila Leopoldina Urban Intervention Project, currently underway in the city of São Paulo, serves as an empirical experiment. Stemming from it, we propose some questions for reflection, namely: What is the appropriate density for housing developments? Can vulnerable populations bear the building maintenance costs brought about by an investment of the scale of an Urban Development Inducing Project? Could the ZEIS (Zona Especial de Interesse Social - Special Social Interest Zone) delimited in the zoning plan of São Paulo be displaced in order to help the implementation of Urban Development Inducing Projects? The discussion is open to other questions that may be raised.
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