Mathilde Moaty: Conflict and urban development. Mobilisations, materialities and a heritage-oriented social form in Vila Leopoldina (São Paulo).

Since the late 1980s, São Paulo has served as a prime testing ground for urban planning tools. Successive municipal administrations across the political spectrum have implemented large-scale urban regeneration projects, designating special zones within which specific regulations apply. More flexible building regulations and easier access to private investment are among the principles intended to drive the rapid regeneration and transformation of land and its uses, as well as the funding of social housing. These measures have proved ineffective in countering the immense socio-spatial inequalities that characterise Brazilian cities. On the contrary, they contribute to conflictual situations and to the exclusion of a section of the population from access to decent housing.  

In 2016, a new urban intervention project (PIU) was proposed to the local council by a Brazilian multinational company that owns land in the Vila Leopoldina neighbourhood, in the western part of São Paulo. This urban regeneration project immediately sparked a conflict between three groups of stakeholders with deep roots in the neighbourhood: the private sector, comprising the long-established economic and financial elite that has shaped Brazil’s patrimonialist social structure; upper-middle-class residents, a small local elite who have more recently settled in secure high-rise apartment blocks; and communities of poor residents, denied access to decent housing. 

Drawing on field research in São Paulo and an online analysis of social media and public consultations, this thesis traces the origins of the conflict and examines the forms of mobilisation and the spaces in which they take place, with a particular focus on built environment. It posits that this territorialised conflict centred on an urban planning instrument (the PIU) is indicative of both the social structures of Brazilian society and the heritage-oriented urban development characteristic of Brazil’s major cities. To demonstrate this, the thesis analyses and compares the territorialised moral economies of the three groups of actors involved in the conflict. 

Composition of the jury

• Marie-Hélène Bacqué, Professor, University of Paris-Ouest (Rapporteur)
• Agnès Deboulet, Professor, University of Paris 8 (Examiner)
• Ana Fernandes, Professor, Federal University of Bahia (Rapporteur)
• Sylvy Jaglin, Professor, Gustave Eiffel University (Joint Supervisor)
• Ozan Karaman, Research Fellow, CNRS (Joint PhD supervisor)
• João Sette Whitaker Ferreira, Professor, University of São Paulo (Joint Supervisor)