Expansão urbana de Feira de Santana/Ba: atuação do Estado e do setor imobiliário (2004 – 2018)

Abstract

The expansion of the city of Feira de Santana has a strong influence of public and private agents. The State stands out for its great influence through urban legislation, as well as public policies, particularly housing. In recent decades, Brazil has had housing policies for the low-income population that are important for studies on urban space production and urban expansion. The real estate sector also has great influence when it promotes the Transformation of urban spaces into merchandise, obtaining, in the over-profits of urban areas, their greatest interest. In this way, the private and public sectors act together in urban expansion with their own interests and in the dependence among them, through housing programs. The study of this thesis aims to analyze the process of urban expansion of Feira de Santana-BA, between 2004 and 2018, based on the performance of public and private agents. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that urban expansion in Feira de Santana was initially promoted by the action of the real estate sector, through the implementation of irregular or regular subdivisions; dismemberment of rural areas up to the large enterprises implemented by urbanizing companies. The municipal government acted in the formulation of laws and plans, in articulation with the demands of the real estate sector, with losses in the quality of the urban space resulting from this process. Investments in infrastructure made by the public sector in locations close to private sector enterprises show the relationship between the two sectors. The Urban Development Master Plan and the Urban Land Management Law, instituted in 2018, demonstrate this aspect by favoring the soil market. The residential allotments and closed condominiums and the housing developments of the State programs promoted urban expansion, creating new spaces in the city, mixing social classes and different socioeconomic strata, causing segregation and self-segregation. With the implementation of closed condominiums, especially the horizontal projects carried out by the real estate sector, it can be observed that this market prevail the logic of space-merchandise, in which the State defines plans and laws for zoning urban space and access to places of public spaces, socially produced, is mediated by the real estate market. In spite of the fact that this production covers the needs of different social classes, it contradicts itself with regard to private appropriation. The State is one of the main producers of the transformation of urban space and the modification of value of the land through the formation of land reserves; the implementation of public services and equipment for collective use or financing through public policies and regulation of real estate activities. The study, then, tries to answer if the performance of the public and private sectors, as agents of urban expansion, generated positive or negative results for the city of Feira de Santana.