Urban and political cartographies of an occupation in Sao Paulo

Abstract

This research project aims at analyzing the process of building occupation in São Paulo, which was substantially expanded during the second half of 1990s, taking « Ocupação de Mauá » as the field of this empirical research. By analyzing « Ocupação de Mauá », we aim at understanding the different urban e political dimensions of the occupations in São Paulo, which are related to the historical issue of popular housing policy in the city, from slams in the beginning of the XXth century to the expansion of favelas in the end of the century. The occupations follow this long lineage; however, there are new forms and dynamics of production of the urban space in the XXIth century that need to be set out. On the one hand, we take the city as reference plane and as part of a bigger urban mesh, in relation to other events, movements and actors that dispute over other forms of ownership and management of the city, seen here as a conflict space. On the other hand, we aim at understanding the dimension of the conflict in the production of urban spaces. The conflicted relations with the State and its operators mark the daily life of an occupation, its interactions and local agencies. By this occurs the creation of a gravitational field in which are added a big amount of different movements (political, juridical, cultural). Thus, the occupations not only are transformed into places of experimentation and creation, but also into places of dispute for the production of space. Center and connector of different subjects, movements and experience, an occupation is crossed by these lines and paths, transversally, in its territoriality. These fragments and clues will be gathered by an ethnographic research and the reconstitution of the occupants' trajectory, which will help us to understand this phenomenon.