Large Housing Complexes at the Outskirts As a Destination for Displaced Communities: A Major Urban Problem in Brazilian Metropolises: The Case of Fortaleza (Ce)

In Brazilian metropolises, the displacement of thousands of families to large peripheral residential complexes has compromised access to decent housing, as well as revealing the perversity in which the right to the city has been violated. In Fortaleza, 4th. municipality in the country, with 2.6 million inhabitants, since 2010, more than 28 thousand homes have been built for low-income families, in neighborhoods on the southern and southwestern outskirts. Much of it meeting the demand caused by large urban projects. However, in this same period, according to human rights offices, more than 30 thousand families were evicted from new occupations, without being offered resettlement alternatives. This article aims to analyze the peripheralization process linked to residential complexes, considering the location in the metropolis, the conditions of segregation and their resistance. As methodological procedures, the following stand out: interviews with social agents, thematic cartography, urban studies on the urban insertion of the complexes, fieldwork and conversation circles. Among the results, there are variations in the spatial distribution of the population in the last demographic census associated with the implementation of housing policies under the command of the building sector but dissociated from the democratization of access to urbanized land. On the one hand, the reduction in density in some neighborhoods benefiting from interventions in favelas close to the seaside and others close to macro-drainage works on the banks of rivers. On the other hand, there is an explosive growth of inhabitants in the outskirts, through low-rise and extremely high-density complexes. In design terms, in addition to the absence of urban services and social facilities, these projects present typological uniqueness, limited flexibility and impossible progressiveness. However, faced with socio-environmental vulnerability, ghettoization and the domination of territories by organized crime, the population begins to organize itself by developing alternative projects, positively impacting public policies.