The securitization of São Paulo’s new centrality frontier

Seeking to contribute to an analysis of the links between real estate expansion and changes in sociospatial control in the region’s urban spaces, I draw from empirical research conducted in São Paulo. More specifically, I examine a frontier area located in the Santo Amaro district, between the corporate centralities of the metropolis’ Southwest Vector and its southern peripheries, comprised of majority black and historically criminalized neighborhoods. My analysis combines mostly qualitative and some quantitative methods, encompassing the examination of a large scale urban renewal project that targets that frontier area, secondary data on state policing, a mapping of security devices distributed across public spaces, and interviews with state and private agents involved in local securitization projects. Thus, informed by critical urban and security studies, I discuss how the advance of a real estate front towards São Paulo’s peripheries relates to the operation of racially and territorially differentiated forms of governance. In doing so, I also look into the leading role of agents linked to the real estate market in local security assemblages, promoting private and public-private surveillance networks, a trend that seems to span beyond Santo Amaro and São Paulo.

Gabriella De Biaggi is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at the University of São Paulo (PPGH-USP). Her research focuses on securitization and real estate expansion in São Paulo’s center-periphery frontiers, with a scholarship from FAPESP. She is a visiting researcher at the Critical Surveillance and Security Studies Lab at the University of Ottawa (CSS/Lab). As a Master’s candidate at USP, Gabriella developed an international research internship at York University’s CITY Institute (2021-2022). Since 2021, she is a member of LASInTec (International Security and Monitoring Technologies Analysis Lab) at Unifesp. Gabriella co-edited the recently published book Memória Obstinada (Obstinate Memory), about the struggle of the mothers’ movement founded after the Osasco and Barueri Massacre of 2015.