LAND TENURE, CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES, REAL ESTATE AND FINANCIAL CAPITAL. WHO OWNS THE CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE?

Abstract

There have been very few empirical studies on urban land and property ownership patterns, due, in part, to the habitual confidential treatment of data related to land, property and transactions. This research sheds light onto this particular subject and presents previously unpublished results for Belo Horizonte, a Latin American metropolis, the third largest metropolitan region in Brazil, with a population of 5 million. The results, at different scales of analysis, indicate a very high concentration of privately owned urban land, particularly by the construction, real estate and financial sectors, and a small number of individuals. This situation is especially severe in the North Axis of the city, a poor, peripheral area, which over the past 15 years has received massive public-private partnership (PPPs) investments in large-scale urban projects. For this research, access to land is considered a fundamental element for exercising the right to the city, as described by Lefebvre, and a possible consequence of its concentration is the denial of this basic right.

Keywords:
land tenure; urban land; property; urban land concentration; large-scale urban projects; Brazil