São Paulo: One hundred years of an urban growth machine

Abstract

This article traverses different historical layers of the metropolis of São Paulo, gathering clues about large-scale real estate operations decisive to the pattern of accumulation and socio-spatial segregation in over the last century. The first act, our starting point, is the 1910 real estate development operation of international financial capital in association with local public and private agents. It spanned more than one third of the city’s urban area, under the leadership of the Companhia City. The second act concerns the very beginnings of the more recent deal-making underlying the construction of a skyline that mimics that of so-called global cities, along the banks of the Pinheiros river. We address, among others, a land development operation that became a milestone in the city’s history, with the capture of 21,000 hectares in areas adjacent to the Pinheiros river, obtained by canalizing and rectifying the river and draining its banks. The succession of the arrangements and coalitions we shall discuss is neither linear nor necessarily indicative of progress – and even less of development. Rather, these are moment-to-moment strategies for the growth of the real estate development machine.