O imobiliário e a reestruturação urbana: a cidade de João Pessoa/PB no século XXI

Abstract

This research investigates which transformations and relationships between the real estate industry – realized by local companies - and government actions exist in the process of production of the intraurban space of a non-metropolitan reality in the beginning of the 21st century and how they impact the urban space restructuring. The thesis defended is that the structure of the non-metropolitan agglomerate suffers intense transformations from the partnership between local real estate agents and the government to increase the valuation and the consolidation of new residential areas in cities, which are complexified, modifying the urban structure based on the center-suburbs model. In this context, location becomes a merchandise, mobilized and qualified by abstract aspects, created from interests, discourses and actions from such urban agents. João Pessoa, city located in the Northeast of Brazil, is characterized as a non-metropolitan reality and is the empirical object of this study, because it has shown, in the recent years, an intense real estate production originated and operated predominantly locally. This way, this research aims to investigate and identify the repercussions of the recent transformations of real estate production and the governmental actions in the urban space restructuring between 2005 and 2015. To that effect, an initial bibliographic research was made about the main topics and research object, followed by a documentary research in municipal archives, property deeds registers, civil construction union and also in databases from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, Ministério das Cidades and Relação Anual de Informações Sociais. The acquisition of an extensive data set - related to real estate, Tax Reports on Real Estate Transfers, Incorporation Registry and Real Estate Registry, real estate market launches, among others - made it possible to create graphs, tables and maps that revealed processes and supported the case. Such elements made possible a quantitative analysis of the process of production of space and, thus, a confirmation of the thesis. It affirms that, around year 2000, a deep change started in the intraurban structuring process of João Pessoa, which encompasses the redefinition of the urban centrality in the suburbs as a direct result of real estate developers in search of higher location yields.