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identified, with massive federal and international investments in the 1970s, a decline in investments and technical capacities in the 1980s, and the entry of new (private) actors in the 1990s, not only as traditional consultants and builders, but also as partners in PPPs for construction and, more recently, operation. The same center‐right coalition controlled the state executive in an environment of low political competition during this period. The few redistributive decisions concerning tariffs and line construction in peripheral areas were decided in relatively closed processes involving politicians, bureaucrats, and private companies, resulting in the low presence of redistributive programs and actions.
Chapter 7 concludes the study of services, where Samuel Godoy investigates the governance of waste management, with particular focus on its recent institutional reforms. The chapter characterizes the sector, summarizes its history and subsequently explores its institutional arrangements and private contractors. Through time, the municipality ceded the operation of services to increasingly more dominant private companies, but at the same time sought to strengthen its regulatory capacities by creating a concession model in which companies are forced to take more risks and make investments. The service is not charged directly, and redistribution may occur through service availability and quality, both heavily influenced by regulation. In general, state capacities and regulatory instruments were initiated under left‐wing administrations, although also strengthened during right‐wing governments, suffering the effects of differences in bureaucratic insulation and the scrutiny of controlling agencies.
The third part of the book discusses housing and land policies. In both cases, issues associated with the increase of land values through State actions are prominent, mobilizing the spatialized interests of developers, landowners, and local citizens. These policies have also mobilized social movements in the city.
Chapter 8, written by Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques and Magaly Pulhez, discusses housing policies. The chapter shows a slow but noticeable diversification of housing policy solutions in the city, in part associated with the gradual consolidation of the urban reform agenda nationally. In a process that cuts across different governments, some programs (easy redistribution) became consolidated alternatives to the traditional construction of new units for homeownership in peripheries, particularly in situ slum upgrading and regularization of irregular settlements. At the same time, social housing in central areas, social rent and active planning policies (hard redistribution) were much more present in left‐wing governments. This trajectory was marked by the slow accumulation of solutions, sometimes in latency, by actors within the community cutting across State and societal boundaries.
In Chapter 9, Telma Hoyler analyses the interactions between developers and public authorities, centered on the approval of development projects. The chapter identifies a recent change in land use approval in São Paulo, moving from an arrangement based predominantly on corruption to an interactive arrangement in which developers became more competitive (and empowered). At the same time, the State has also expanded its potential capacities to regulate. This institutional reform, implemented by a left‐wing administration, reduced information asymmetry to the State while providing a faster and more predictable approval process. Instead of structural capture, this trajectory represented the induction of governmental capacities by the private sector by placing the fight against corruption on the agenda.
Chapter 10 by Betina Sarue and Stefano Pagin studies the evolution of urban renewal in São Paulo, the most critical single vector of urban change in recent years. These projects mobilize a specific instrument called Urban Operations, oriented towards the increase of land values and air rights production. The State plays a fundamental role in these through governance arrangements with politicians, bureaucracies, developers and sometimes civil society actors. This instrument was initially created for removing centrally located “favelas,” thus contributing to segregation and intraurban inequality. Urban Operations Consortia created an innovative instrument for urban renewal linked to the financialization of land that produces not only additional financial resources but also more discretionary funds, creating incentives for disseminating their use throughout the country. Even when including social housing and social participation (their most potentially redistributive elements), these represent a residual part and entail a dispute over their location within the bounded perimeter. UOCs have changed in format and redistributive capacity over time, mainly in left‐wing administrations.
Exploring this discussion of urban renewal, Betina Sarue analyses the governance of the Porto Maravilha project in Chapter 11. This is located in Rio de Janeiro and associated with the 2016 Olympic Games but was produced mainly through the use of instruments first created in São Paulo, as well as the London Olympics organizations. After several failed attempts, the project became viable in terms of its funding and policy coordination with the most significant public‐private concession of public services in Brazil, intense (institutional and financial) federal participation, and an institutional design derived from São Paulo's experiences. The chapter shows that focusing on large urban project institutions contributes to better understandings of their redistributive challenges, as well as enhancing comparative analyses of the mobilized policy instruments.
Finally, in the conclusion, Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques compares the policy trajectories presented by the chapters and draws lessons for future analyses of urban politics and policies. Our conclusions challenge widely disseminated ideas about Southern city policies, usually based on the centrality of political participation, or the effects of economic and institutional macro‐processes, or combinations of clientelism, patronage, and corruption. Contrary to these notions, the São Paulo policies tended to follow incremental advancements that reduced inequalities of access, although differently by specific policies and governments, and marked by numerous conflicts.
This trajectory was a result of the slow but cumulative construction of government capacities, institutions and policy instruments within a highly competitive political environment that pushed mayors and parties to deliver more and better policies. Ideological differences between governments were central to explaining policy innovations and the differences between easy and hard redistribution policies. At the same time, policy production processes and their governance patterns help to explain the different paces of change, resilience and latency in distinct policy sectors.
In general, therefore, the trajectory of policy construction and change in São Paulo involved the same actors and mechanisms that explain policy production and urban governments elsewhere, although in locally specific combinations, as in any other large metropolis.
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