Regeneration through the ‘Pedagogy of Confrontation’: Exploring the Critical Spatial Practices of Social Movements in Inner City São Paulo as Avenues for Urban Renewal

The city centre of São Paulo is increasingly a key site for local housing movements to challenge the rules and practices of spatial injustice in Brazil. In a context where housing for low-income groups is in short supply and, critically, continues to be characterized by highly skewed social and spatial distribution, occupied buildings have emerged as laboratories for the production of novel ways of inhabiting the city. This paper addresses on-going inner-city occupations as possible alternatives to the prevailing modes of conceiving and imagining urban renewal. As such, it outlines an approach to regeneration that engages processes of self-production and self-management as a means to achieve dignified homes and contest exclusionary urbanization.