Slums as an extreme face of segregation

Abstract

The socio-spatial structure of the metropolis of São Paulo has been undergoing modifications in the last 40 years. Slums have been a presence in the urban fabric, in the capital and in metropolitan municipalities. This article intends to show the evolution of the social and socio-spatial structure in the metropolis in the last decades of the 20th century and the first of the 21st by the construction of the socio-occupational variable and its spatialization, by analysis factorial correspondence and clusters, based on census data from 1980, 1991, 2000 and 2010 and the spread of slums that follows its structure. The sharpest mark of the metropolitan socio-spatial structure is the “oil stain”, where the center-periphery model operates. The analysis indicates that the upper spaces became more exclusive and homogeneous, while others, more heterogeneous. A process of elitism is be observed within the metropolis, with closed condominiums and housing for the middle classes, and spaces of extreme poverty, like slums and precarious allotments. In the 2020s, the pandemic brought new variables to a structurally inadequate urban fabric. Through the data of slums censuses, the 2019 IBGE research and Map Biomas, there is an alarming increase in slums in the capital and metropolitan municipalities.

Keywords:
Segregation; Sociospatial inequalities; Slums