Moradia popular na cidade de São Paulo (1930-1940): projetos e ambições

Abstract

This research aims to contribute with the studies concerned to the comprehension of the debates and initiatives about the question of the popular habitation in São Paulo City. Based on the reading of the historiography and the studied sources - annals, magazines, newspapers, memories, photographs and administrative processes -, this dissertation has as object of analysis the period from 1930 to 1940, especially the two events about habitation occurred at that time: I Congresso de Habitação (I Congress on Habitation) (1931) and Jornada de Habitação Econômica (Economic Habitation Journey) (1941). We have apprehended that the promoters of those events as well as the promoters of the proposals for the construction of popular habitations (Engineering Institute and Idort, with public and industrial support) aimed to legitimate their interventions through a technical, rational-scientific, and modemizing discourse, which required the State's participation. These promoters had as one oftheir principIes the necessity of increasing the labor productivity as well as of improving the control over the working class, favoring the consolidation of a city that wished to be modernoMoreover, one defmed that the implementation ofthe proposals would have as one of its agents the workers themselves through Funds and Institutes of Retirement Incomes and Pensions. In this way, we could realize that the question on the popular habitation was not considered in isolation, but in its social and spatial dimension. The policy on habitation desired in that moment had as one of its principIes the conviction that different parts of society should have different kinds of dwelling in different kinds of space, whose function wouldn't be just habitation. For this reason, it was necessary the interferente of public power due to the features and expenses of the interventions. The study of the proposals and initiatives signalized the spatial and social limitations of such propositions and interventions, which aimed not on1y the solution for habitation's deficit, but also the action upon the city, conducing to the specialization and "hierarchyzation" of its spaces and citizens. At the same time, by putting the whole documentation into dialogue, it was possible to comprehend that, for a considerable part of São Paulo City's population, the choice was searching for alternative forms of living in the city, such as moving toward its periphery