11 Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo
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Matthew Caulkins
Abstract
The definition of urban vacancy is fraught with conceptual and practical difficulties. The definitions vary as widely as do the different forms of state intention designed to reduce vacancy. With this in mind, the proposition here is that vacancy is the frontier space where different spatio-legal world-making projects collide. This chapter centres on three conflicting spatio-legal logics and how they relate to persistent vacant spaces in the centre of São Paulo. Recent statistics for the metropolitan region highlight the explosive combination of 595,691 vacant buildings with the potential of being occupied and 639,839 inhabitants left homeless or living in precarious conditions (Fundação Pinheiros, 2018). On the one hand, a market logic values vacancy as a necessary condition for the generation of speculative profits. On the other, the bureaucratic logic of controlled consumption views vacancy as inefficient because it does not provide socially or economically productive uses. Lastly, squatting movements see the potential in these vacant spaces to reduce the astronomical housing deficit and, in particular, the lack of centrally located social housing.
This chapter argues that vacancy is a socially constructed category (Sack, 1983), both spatially and legally (Delaney, 2010). Ideas of empty property and empty space are entwined and cannot be completely separated. Spaces are considered vacant because they are not deemed economically or socially productive, and because they do not present visible signs of being actively owned. The physical emptiness can facilitate potential sales or being filled with different social uses (Vasudevan, 2015). However, the concept of vacancy is contested.
Abstract
The definition of urban vacancy is fraught with conceptual and practical difficulties. The definitions vary as widely as do the different forms of state intention designed to reduce vacancy. With this in mind, the proposition here is that vacancy is the frontier space where different spatio-legal world-making projects collide. This chapter centres on three conflicting spatio-legal logics and how they relate to persistent vacant spaces in the centre of São Paulo. Recent statistics for the metropolitan region highlight the explosive combination of 595,691 vacant buildings with the potential of being occupied and 639,839 inhabitants left homeless or living in precarious conditions (Fundação Pinheiros, 2018). On the one hand, a market logic values vacancy as a necessary condition for the generation of speculative profits. On the other, the bureaucratic logic of controlled consumption views vacancy as inefficient because it does not provide socially or economically productive uses. Lastly, squatting movements see the potential in these vacant spaces to reduce the astronomical housing deficit and, in particular, the lack of centrally located social housing.
This chapter argues that vacancy is a socially constructed category (Sack, 1983), both spatially and legally (Delaney, 2010). Ideas of empty property and empty space are entwined and cannot be completely separated. Spaces are considered vacant because they are not deemed economically or socially productive, and because they do not present visible signs of being actively owned. The physical emptiness can facilitate potential sales or being filled with different social uses (Vasudevan, 2015). However, the concept of vacancy is contested.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Rethinking ruination in the post-crisis context
- Rem(a)inders of loss: a Lacanian approach to new urban ruins 21
- Dignifying the ruins: a former Jewish girls’ school in Berlin 35
- Traversing wastelands: reflections on an abandoned railway yard 53
- Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 73
-
The political economy of urban vacant space
- Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’ 91
- Conflicting rationalities and messy actualities of dealing with vacant housing in Halle/Saale, East Germany 109
- Post-disaster ruins: the old, the new and the temporary 125
- The post-crisis properties of demolishing Detroit, Michigan 145
- Guarding presence: absent owners and the labour of managing vacancy 163
-
Reappropriating urban vacant spaces
- Politicising vacancy and commoning housing in municipalist Barcelona 181
- Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo 197
- (Im)Material infrastructures and the reproduction of alternative social projects in urban vacant spaces 211
- Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House 229
- Conclusion: Centring vacancy – towards a research agenda 243
- Index 251
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Rethinking ruination in the post-crisis context
- Rem(a)inders of loss: a Lacanian approach to new urban ruins 21
- Dignifying the ruins: a former Jewish girls’ school in Berlin 35
- Traversing wastelands: reflections on an abandoned railway yard 53
- Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 73
-
The political economy of urban vacant space
- Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’ 91
- Conflicting rationalities and messy actualities of dealing with vacant housing in Halle/Saale, East Germany 109
- Post-disaster ruins: the old, the new and the temporary 125
- The post-crisis properties of demolishing Detroit, Michigan 145
- Guarding presence: absent owners and the labour of managing vacancy 163
-
Reappropriating urban vacant spaces
- Politicising vacancy and commoning housing in municipalist Barcelona 181
- Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo 197
- (Im)Material infrastructures and the reproduction of alternative social projects in urban vacant spaces 211
- Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House 229
- Conclusion: Centring vacancy – towards a research agenda 243
- Index 251
