REGULARIZING SEGREGATION: THE EFFECTS OF LAND REGULATION PROGRAMME IN SAO JOSE DO RIO PRETO/SP

In urban space, land is an unevenly accessed commodity. The best in financial terms, who are more affluent, may reside in well-served areas of infrastructure, while for those poorer, there remains the peripheries, shantytowns, or furthest neighborhoods, mainly from the central region, which is most highly valued. In Sao Jose do Rio Preto, the intense flow of new city residents towards this city has occurred mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, there had been a large population growth in a city not quite ready for it, and the result was the worsening in urban problems mainly marked by the housing shortage. By taking advantage of this, the landowners have come up with the solutions in the form of lots built in ways that disregarded several local laws. Between 1980 and 1990, over a hundred precarious enterprises have been built. In those places, there were no pavement, recreational areas, electric connection, water and sewarage treatment, etc. In 2009 only, the City Hall initiated the land regulation programme, having brought to date 56 legal allotments. Yet, with regularization, these ventures are now part of the official urban layout, thereby making visible one of its major effects: socio-spatial segregation, since it was normal for agents to deploy such allotments in distant areas. The purpose of this paper is analyzing the effects of municipal land regularization programme and its impacts on the city.