The Influence of Housing Policies on Urban Fragmentation in Large Brazilian Cities

Urban fragmentation is one of the most important characteristics of the recent urban development in Latin America (Coy 2010, Maricato 2011, Pereira/Hidalgo 2008). Typical causes are impacts of globalisation on job markets. The emergence of residential fragments is related to the building of gated communities for high-income households as well as the provision of housing for the poor by informal markets (Abramo 2009). The housing deficit in the urbanized areas of Brazil amounts to approx. 5,6 million units, of which almost 90 per cent belong to the target group of social housing (households with less that three minimum wages). Do the strategies for intervention developed by the government for reducing housing deficit help to dissolve residential fragments? Or do urban development and housing policies and/or their execution lead to the emergence of low-income-fragments?

The research project of which the concept and first findings of a case study in Fortaleza shall be presented, aims to investigate the influence of housing policies and their implementation on urban fragmentation in Brazil. The study includes the analysis of public interventions in the realm of social housing (new housing estates and regeneration of existing squatted areas) and the influence of development plans and interventions on socio-spatial structures. The objective of the study is to discover which prerequisites assist housing policies’ implementation to counteract urban fragmentation and which parameters (i.e. value of lots, decision-making-structures) or/and original specifications (planning-procedures, restrictions of guidelines for funding) provoke them to fail. The causes are to be examined to broaden the understanding of urban developments’ and housing policies’ potentials to better the attendance of intense urbanisation-processes observed internationally.