Introduction

After understanding the general characteristics of the city of Sao Paulo and the logic of housing production in Brazil, this chapter presents two emblematic and marginal cases of recent self-managed housing production in the city. According to the latest National Census of 2010, 84.36 per cent of the Brazilian population live in the urban areas of our cities. This has happened because Brazilian cities have experienced a process of intense population growth over the last five decades. In the case of the city of São Paulo, the population, which was 3.7 million in 1960, jumped to 8.5 million in 1980 and reached 11.3 million in 2010. For Brazil as a whole, population growth over the same period was 120 million inhabitants, reaching 190.7 million inhabitants, almost all of them living in urban areas. In general, it can be stated that the growth of Brazilian cities throughout the second half of the 20th century was characterised by the configuration of two distinct cities: a legal city, consolidated by the implementation of official (legalised) sections usually located in more central and structured areas, with available housing for the middle and upper classes; and an illegal city, destined to house the lower classes.

In large cities and metropolises, access to housing by the lowerincome population usually occurs through precarious solutions, such as housing in slums, in tenements or through self-build residences in illegal (or irregular) peripheral settlements. Due to the lack of an effective housing policy for the low-income population, self-construction and the informal housing market have been decisive in shaping our cities (D’Ottaviano and Quaglia-Silva, 2010). Alongside this, the public promotion of dwellings is supplied by the construction of large housing estates intended for the low-income population. This state policy, implemented in the late 1960s, was one of the main factors responsible for consolidating the socio-spatial segregation model known as the rich city centre versus the poor periphery.

Beginnings: housing policy in Brazil

The first experience at the national level of the provision of housing for the low-income population was the Affordable House Foundation (FCP), created in 1946 through a federal decree.