Parcelamento do solo e apropriação privada de atributo ambiental: contradições no processo de produção espacial em Quatro Barras

Abstract

Less and less present in large metropolitan areas, environmental attributes are reflected in the differential of urban properties, transforming nature into a desire for consumption and real estate speculation. This phenomenon is consistent with the peripheral, dispersed and walled urban expansion, symbolized by subdivisions and closed condominiums, which establish a new pattern of social and spatial segregation in contemporary cities. These developments add to the living spaces the speeches of security, social status, quality of life and exclusivity, often associated with positive environmental attributes, such as a remarkable landscape. At the same time, they are controversial typologies from the view point from urban planning, mainly regarding the distortions on land development process and the possible damage to the public interest, whose meaning privileges the use value of the city and nature. In this sense, this research aims to analyze connections between spatial production and the appropriation of an environmental attribute by closed plots of lands and residential condominiums on the edge of the Iraí lake, city of Quatro Barras, eastern Curitiba metropolitan region. Based on a theoretical framework on the virtualities of the capitalist production of space and the relevance of State in this production, an empirical analysis of undertakings that configure a monopolistic situation in relation to the landscape attributed to the lake of the mentioned dam is carried out. The analysis is structured on three spatial scales – regional, urban and local, interrelated. The hypothesis is confirmed that the land subdivision process, regulated by urban and environmental legislation, has become an instrument of urban planning and development, an instrument of private appropriation and a source of monopoly income. It appears that, in the context of the population and economic dynamics of the metropolis, the Iraí dam motivated the implementation of plots of lands and condominiums in Quatro Barras, establishing an emerging occupation pattern that qualifies the fragmentation and segregation of the urban structure. The approval and consolidation processes of these projects are permeated by irregularities, often endowed with apparent legality and diffuse legitimacy, in which hybrid modalities of land subdivisions are configured. The State, through omission and, at times, action, delegated to the private sector the protagonism in the planning and production of space, which thus became an individual expression and a collective loss, without consideration or retribution to the city. Regarding the Iraí lake, despite its multiple urban functions and its potential for public use, there is an incessant construction of restrictions on its access by the general public, through a walled complex, which ensure monopoly to a portion of the city occupied by high income people.