Minha casa, qual vida cotidiana? investigando perdas e ganhos de capital espacial da vida cotidiana de indivíduos beneficiados pelo Programa Minha Casa, Minha Vida (PMCMV)

Abstract

This thesis aims at understanding changes in the spatial capital of everyday life of individuals who moved into houses financed by housing governmental programs. Furthermore, it discusses how rehousing might affect the routine of the people in the city and generate problems such as spatial and social exclusion and segregation. The Spatial Capital of Everyday Life is a theoretical-methodological effort built upon the Theory of Spatial Capital (MARCUS, 2010) to address intrinsic aspects of everyday life of individuals in the city. Specifically, the Spatial Capital of Everyday Life are advantages/disadvantages extracted from the combination of the configuration of the urban network, land use, and the public transport system that enable access to opportunities for finding and accessing people and places in the city. The empirical focus is the Spatial Capital of Everyday Life of people who moved into houses financed by Minha Casa, Minha Vida housing program (MCMV) (“My House, My Life”), in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The MCMV, created in 2009 and discontinued in 2020, was the biggest housing program that existed in Brazil. During its existence, the PMCMV financed the acquisition of almost 4 million housing units nationwide for low and medium-income people. A relevant production that created and consolidated new urban territories. Therefore, altering relations between people that moved into PMCMV units and the city at different levels. In this regard, the following research questions arise: how is the Spatial Capital of Everyday Life in the MCMV’s housing estate? What would it be like if they were still living in the old locations? What were the gains and losses of spatial capital? How might this impact the everyday lives of individuals who have moved into these residences? The hypothesis is that when individuals moved into the PMCMV housing estates, they lose Spatial Capital at the local scale. This loss, worse for the lower-income people, requires them to travel longer distances to access opportunities in the city, as compared to the location of their former residences. Traveling longer distances makes them more dependent on paid modes of transport, thus creating hardships for people with lower incomes and fewer resources. To understand the interplay between gains and losses in their urban life, the research compares the Spatial Capital of the location where these individuals lived before and the MCMV's locations. The analysis was based on the creation of Spatial Capital profiles concerning four scales related to different modes of transport: (i) local scale 01 - walking; (ii) local scale 02 - cycling; (iii) global scale 01 - a 23-minute commute on public transport; (iv) global scale 02 - a 47-minute commute on public transport. These profiles were modeled using cumulative accessibility measures calculated from a unimodal and a multimodal urban transport networks models created for this thesis. The results show a major loss of Spatial Capital of Everyday Life for lower-income individuals. These results demonstrate the hypothesis and show the segregating character of the MCMV. Moreover, it recalls the need to discuss and remodel housing programs, taking into account the costs that emerge from the new location and how and if the beneficiaries can deal with them.