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restrictions on the individual property right to guarantee a minimum of safety and well-being to the
citizens excluded from the formal housing market, that is, those people who cannot pay for a good
location. The Statute bases itself on the social principle of property, restraining real estate
speculation, and on the democratic management of the city and compulsory participation
(TRINDADE, 2012).
In a global level, a similar initiative comes from the “World Charter for the Right to the City”,
elaborated in the 2004 World Social Forum. It also advocates the social role of the city and of the
property, clearly establishing that the city “must guarantee for all its inhabitants the total usufruct of
the available resources” and that it “must take the realization of projects and investments for the
benefit of the urban community as a whole (...), in harmony with nature, for the current and future
generations”. “In the formulation and implementation of urban policies, the collective social and
cultural interest must prevail over individual property rights and speculative interests” (WSF, 2005).
Nevertheless, until the Statute objectives are felt in practice, it will be a long path. Similar ideas
already existed since the constitutions of 1934, 1946 and 1969, but in the legal interpretations and
for the private, the prevailing understanding always defended the right of property as an unrestricted
and absolute right in front of any other. Following the legal paradigm from Classic Liberalism, the
Brazilian Civil Code defended “the property right almost absolutely”, what severely limited the action
of public power and overstimulated real estate speculation (TRINDADE, 2012). In this way, an
apparently paradoxical situation emerged: while a huge population contingent crowded in the
outskirts of the city, living in extremely precarious conditions, innumerable empty terrains and
properties conformed the urban landscape – great part even in the central area (TRINDADE, 2012).
In most of Latin America, the growth of urban areas has not been determined by the necessity of
accommodating the population, but for the real estate speculation interests. For example, in São
Paulo city, the IBGE census for 2010 accused the existence of 290 thousand empty properties in
the city, more than enough to shelter all the population then still living in the city in risk zones (around
130 thousand families) (ESTADÃO, 2010).
One of the most significant heritages from the Brazilian colonial formation consists in a patrimonialist
mentality, deeply ingrained in the social tissue, which contributes decisively to reinforce the
conception of the property right as something holy and inviolable, even by those who do not have it
(TRINDADE, 2012). The price to be paid for this “choice” also included an intense environmental
degradation, since a great part of the poor informal housings is built along streams, on the shores of
sources of public water supply and on hill slopes, contributing to disasters that take lives periodically
(MARICATO, 2011). By the way, the public power connivance to the illegal occupation of urban lands
by the poor must be understood even as a strategy to cushion social tensions. However, there is an
implicit condition for this tolerance: the lands must be out of the private market interests (MARICATO,
2010).
Finally, an important aspect to be analyzed here is what is understood as
citizenship
, because this
is crucial to the role, rights, and duties that are expected of every citizen in society. The definition of
the sociologist Thomas H. Marshall (1949) is of great value to this understanding. According to his
analysis, “citizenship” refers to a status that allows the individual to fully participate in the political
community and in the social heritage, a process whose effectiveness depends on a large scale on
the construction of a feeling of belonging, able to connect the individuals to a wider community.
Further, citizenship can be divided into three classes, in relation to their corresponding rights:
civil
,
political
and
social
. While the
civil rights
widen with the no-interference of the State, being understood
as “liberties”, the
social rights
depend on the State protection to be guaranteed, being understood
as “powers”. From this duality comes that the fight for citizenship develops naturally from the conflict
between liberties and powers. Not by accident, Marshall affirmed that in the XX Century citizenship