Transitivity between the formal and the informal:

Critical social reproduction and peripheral real estate markets

Thiago Canettieri, Laura Vilela Campos, Leonardo Bahia and Catarina Ferolla

Published in Issue 8.1 // The Long Read

Keywords: Peripheries, social reproduction, real estate markets, urban informality, Belo Horizonte

Abstract:

This paper contributes to the literature in the field of urban studies by moving beyond the formal/informal binaries. Based on ethnographic-inspired research in a metropolitan periphery of Belo Horizonte (Brazil) we argue that real estate properties in peripheries transition between regimes of formality and informality, adapting to the different moments of families’ social reproduction. Thus, the text aims to understand the existing divergences and convergences between formal and informal real estate markets and how they integrate the networks of everyday life in the periphery. The paper proposes the concepts of peripheral real estate markets and critical social reproduction to articulate, respectively, the market practices of real estate properties carried out in the urban peripheries and the strategies for reproducing life in a context of crisis. In this manner, it sheds light on the central role of land and housing in the lives of the urban poor, which, more than just serving as shelter, represent ways through which they can make up for low incomes and unemployment.

http://doi.org/10.54825/LOOY2998

Thiago Canettieri
Geographer, with a Master’s and PhD in Geography. Serves as a professor in the Department of Urbanism at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). He is a researcher in the Observatório das Metrópoles, Cosmópolis, Cefavela and the Grupo Criticar. His research focuses on everyday life and social reproduction in peripheries.

Laura Vilela Campos
Architect and urban planner graduated from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). Her research focuses on the production of space and emancipated practices that overcome the city-country binary, particularly in the Global South.

Leonardo Bahia
Architect and Urbanist from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, specialist in Urban Mobility and Master’s student in Transportation at UFMG. His research focuses on peripheral urbanization in Brazil, with an emphasis on socio-spatial inequalities, everyday life in peripheral areas, and the relationship between mobility and urban production.

Catarina Ferolla
Architect and urban planner graduated from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). Her research investigates the role of the State in the production and regulation of housing informality, focusing on peripheral urbanization processes and the formation of popular territories in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

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