Building on research and analyses developed since 1979, the year of publication of the seminal book The Capitalist Production of Housing (and the City) in Industrial Brazil, organized by Erminia Maricato with a preface by Francisco de Oliveira, as well as on the diagnosis of a deadlock in urban policy in the country, it becomes essential to articulate the evaluation of the various programs and policies implemented since then. The goal is to move beyond urban and housing policy solutions that were shaped by a diagnosis of industrial Brazil and are no longer effective in a contemporary context marked by the reprimarization of the economy, deindustrialization, and financial dominance, factors that have drastically altered the outcomes of housing and urban programs and policies.

The role of centralized planning and the so-called Brazilian economic miracle of the 1970s definitively reshaped Brazilian cities, deepening already ongoing processes of metropolization. This period saw rapid urban population growth driven by migration and the expansion of urban peripheries. Analytically, the concept of urban spoliation, coined by Lúcio Kowarick, already pointed to the theoretical importance of that historical moment for understanding the profound transformations occurring across Brazilian territory, both urban and rural.

The accumulation model then emerging in Brazil was disrupted by rising oil prices and U.S. interest rate shocks. Within a political framework aimed at maintaining elite pacts, President Geisel’s controlled political opening marked a transition without rupture. However, this period of liberalization coexisted with a growing wave of popular demands, for both the redemocratization of the country and the implementation of socially-oriented public policies. Although the rise of popular mobilizations did not prevent the elite-controlled transition, it deeply marked the New Republic and the nature of state intervention in social policies.

In hindsight, the negotiated nature of this political transition becomes clearer, particularly in light of how social issues were subsequently addressed and how policies and programs were formulated to respond to them. In various reports, government plans, and study groups at the time, administrative decentralization was often touted as a panacea for pressing social problems. The strong centralization of the previous system came to be seen as synonymous with outdated governance, incapable of meeting Brazil’s needs. However, adopting decentralization as the core issue led to confusion between concepts such as direct participation, democratization, and decentralization.

It was during this period that the Urban Reform movement emerged, extensively studied and, according to the literature, now facing an impasse in current policies and programs. Is it still possible to center urban policies and programs around planning tools, particularly the strategic master plan? What do comparative case studies conducted in municipalities with differing characteristics reveal about the implementation of these tools?

The horizontal expansion of the São Paulo Metropolitan Region (RMSP), portrayed in the 1979 book, exemplifies the urban spoliation necessary for low-wage urbanization. However, while this process was presented as a national trend, not all Brazilian capitals underwent urbanization in this manner at the time. After all, it was precisely the polarization and centralization of the economic miracle that enabled the development of low-wage industrialization.

The municipalities located in what we now identify as the new frontiers of agricultural expansion, within a reprimarized Brazil, were, at the time of the research that informed the book, either losing population or still operating under a low-intensity agricultural and livestock production model.

The analytical grammar of the 1970s centered reflections on space production around labor and the state-capital relationship, as well as their attempts to generate a spatial adjustment functional to the accumulation process. This diagnosis led to a social-democratic agenda that advocated for changes in the status of labor in society and for democratizing the state, increasing the responsiveness of policies to demands from organized workers, unions, and social movements. While this framework was powerful in inaugurating a new field of study, it is now crucial to understand both the exhaustion of this model and its inadequacy for analyzing contemporary problems.

It remains essential to recognize the importance of this positive agenda as a vehicle for organization and for achieving significant, incremental gains. At the same time, however, it is equally important to identify the limits of instrumental urban policy as a public policy tool for promoting a transformed urban space, especially within a post-industrial context and an increasingly enclave-based economy.

How is urbanization unfolding today in these new frontiers of agricultural expansion? What are the connections to national metropolises in a context of financialized capitalism in which Brazil is embedded? One of the main goals of the INCT is to understand and analyze the characteristics of this urbanization based on empirical evidence and data science.

Thirty-five years after the enactment of the Federal Constitution, a little over two decades since the City Statute, and with the country now characterized by a less industrial and more agrarian and service-based economy, it is time to take stock, of past research, of the results and impacts of policies, and of the development of new prospective investigations.