Eduardo Marques | The transformations of São Paulo and its urban policies since the 1980s

The transformations of São Paulo and its urban policies since the 1980s

04/09/2019 12:00 am

5 - 6:30 PM

370 Wurster Hall

Please join the Latin American Cities Working Group for a talk with visiting scholar Eduardo Marques, who will discuss urban policy in São Paulo since Brazil’s re-democratization and present findings from his recent book “As políticas do urbano em São Paulo” (“The politics of the urban in São Paulo,” English-version forthcoming).

São Paulo has experienced significant changes in the last decades, since Brazil’s re-democratization. This presentation will explore the city’s main transformations in social, economic, and demographic terms, as well as discuss the role of urban policies during this period. Even though São Paulo suffers from its deep social inequality and segregation patterns, the city has experienced both poverty reduction and improvement in access to services. While the majority of large metropolises in the Global South are generally considered ungovernable, the implementation of urban policies in São Paulo is the reason why this could be overcome. Therefore, contrary to expectations, São Paulo showed a conflicted but incremental expansion of services, policies, and government interventions in the period, although different in policy and much more closed in decision-making than usually expected. Policy changes were triggered by combinations of political competition with the specific dynamics of policy processes in contemporary Brazil. This presentation explores these topics while departing from findings exposed in previous works recently published:  “As políticas do urbano em São Paulo” (MARQUES, 2018)  and “São Paulo in the Twenty-First Century Spaces, Heterogeneities, Inequalities” (MARQUES, 2016) 

Eduardo Marques is full-professor at the Department of Political Science at USP and researcher and Deputy Director of the Center for Metropolis Studies CEM (Cepid/Fapesp), Principal Investigator Fapesp and 1B investigator CNPq. He holds a degree in Civil Engineering (UFRJ, 1987), a specialization in Public Health (Fiocruz, 1988), an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning (UFRJ, 1993) and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (Unicamp, 1998). He was a visiting researcher at Columbia University, UCL/UK and UC Berkeley. In 2013 and 2016 he acted as a visiting professor at Sciences Po, Paris. Currently, he serves as an École Urbaine council member (Sciences Po Paris) and corresponding editor of IJURR (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research). He was the president of the RC-21 of the International Sociological Association (2014/2018), coordinated the public policy section at ABCP and the political science area at Fapesp, directed CEM (2004/2009) and the IPSA-USP Summer School on research methods (2004/2008) and acted as IJURR Foundation trustee (2012/2018). He published 14 books, 53 book chapters, 61 journal articles, 5 book reviews, cited 4,140 times at Google academic. Participated in 166 Ph.D. and MSc boards, as well as 16 professor selection processes. Presently, he supervises 8 MSc and Ph.D. dissertations and has previously supervised 9 PhDs, 22 MScs, 8 post-docs and 12 scientific initiations.

Support by the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and Global Metropolitan Studies Program (GMS).

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