“Fim de semana” and “Loteamento clandestino”

approaches to the Popular Universe of Housing in São Paulo (1970-1990)

Abstract

This text is based on an analysis of two films by architect and urban planner Ermínia Maricato, Fim de semana (1975) and Loteamento clandestino (1979), and attempts to reflect on some of the relationships created in São Paulo, the largest South American metropolis, with the work of John Turner (starting with Vivienda. Todo el poder para los usuarios, published in 1977). It seeks to grasp the similarities and discrepancies between different players who dedicated themselves to thinking about social housing in Latin America by defending popular participation in its development. Following the path opened by other researchers at the University of São Paulo, Maricato develops a sociological and ethnographic approach to the outskirts of São Paulo by recording the way low-income populations build housing and revealing the impossibility for those subjects to access the formal housing market. In the late 1980s, during the first municipal administration of the redemocratization period, Maricato was Secretary of Housing, during which time mutual aid became a State policy. A paradox arose: did supporting self-construction mean that you were pouring water on the mill of precariousness or that you were defending libertarian ideas against the oppression of the authoritarian State? The aim here is to discuss these issues, relating Brazilian intellectual production to a more general movement with the intention of contributing to the debate.