at a glance

The public powers contributed to this process, principally through the construction of large housing establishments in areas of weak infrastructure, where residents would have to travel for kilometers each day to get to work. Today, the urban centers of these cities continue to be the regions with the largest concentrations of jobs in the metropolitan area, but contain a significant number of unused or underutilized houses and residencies. For this reason, social movements have linked the issues of urban renewal and housing. Activists and scholars who historically centered their fight on demands related to the problems faced by suburbs and peripheral areas of the city - urbanization and regularization of favelas and settlements, the creations of networks of services and public utilities, the self-management of housing production - today have as their aim the use and defense of housing in central areas.