ACTIVATE, ARTICULATE, ADVOCATE:

CO-PRODUCTION FOR THE RIGHT TO OCCUPY, HOLD GROUND UPGRADE

Young Land Occupations in São Paulo’s Zones of Environmental ProtectionCo-Designing Urban Strategies and Tactical Interventions

In collaboration with

Ana Paula Pimentel Walker, University of Michigan; Benedito Roberto Barbosa, LabJUTA UF ABC, UMM e Centro Gaspar Garcia de Direitos Humanos;

Luciana Nicolau Ferrara, Francisco de Assis Comarú,

Fernando Botton, LabJUTA Universidade Federal do ABC; Marilene Ribeiro de Souza and Sheila Cristiane Santos Nobre, União dos Movimentos de Moradia;  

LabJUTA Universidade Federal do ABC

Sponsored by

FORD-LASA SPECIAL PROJECT AWARD

Date

2022

This Participatory Action Research (PAR) project aims to increase knowledge about the trajectories of young land occupations, informal and precarious settlements, and irregular subdivisions in the Southern periphery of São Paulo City, while fostering coalition building and co-producing strategies to advance tenure security and upgrading. The PAR has focused on facilitating knowledge exchange among more experienced informal settlements with a long tradition of community organizing and those that are in the initial stages of their leadership development. Specifically, the project prioritizes young land occupations since social movements have noticed an increase in the number of recently established precarious informal settlements. Community organizing in the southern periphery faces the challenge of compliance with strict environmental planning regulations that tend to criminalize informality while approving more formal urban development projects with high real estate value. 


This report documents the outcomes of the collaboration between faculty from Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan and LabJuta (Laboratory of Territorial Justice) at Universidade Federal do ABC at Santo André, state of São Paulo, the Non-Profit legal aid office, CenterGaspar Garcia for Human Rights, based in São Paulo and other social movements and community partners.

 

The Community Atlas includes the portrait of fourteen communities in the southern periphery, three of them young land occupations and eleven consolidated precarious settlements. The Atlas stands alone as a booklet for the communities. The community portraits are built upon three methods: data analysis of in-depth interviews with community leaders from each settlement; mapping of each community overtime via Google Earth and spatial regulatory and infrastructural analysis via georeferencing; and community Legal and Land Use Files based on document and legal analysis, mapping, and interviews with informants.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, community partners and collaborators identified the need to investigate and advocate for access to potable water in informal and precarious settlements of all types.

Agua e Moradia