{"id":27194,"date":"2016-03-04T13:04:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T16:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=27194"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T15:08:07","slug":"war-of-places-the-colonization-of-land-and-housing-in-the-financial-era-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=27194","title":{"rendered":"War of Places: The Colonization of Land and Housing in the Financial Era [BOOK REVIEW]"},"content":{"rendered":"

For more than six years Dr. Raquel Rolnik<\/a> toured the world as Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing for the UN Human Rights Council, obtaining testimonials and observing the striking shift in the concept of housing<\/a> from a social good to a financial asset. Her latest book, Guerra dos Lugares: A Coloniza\u00e7\u00e3o de Terra e Moradia na Era de Finan\u00e7as<\/em><\/a> (War of Places: The Colonization of Land and Housing in the Financial Era<\/em>),\u00a0addresses this shift\u00a0through a collection of case studies and is a continuation of Rolnik’s doctoral thesis combined with new insights from her years in the field with the UN.<\/p>\n

\"War<\/a>From the Maldives to the United States, funding for social housing has dried up, giving way to a new urban complex dominated by what Rolnik calls “financial hegemony,” where financial and housing market deregulations coincide with credit expansion, pushing more families into the private market through\u00a0mortgages that are impossible to pay off, particularly after the 2007 global housing crisis. This, Rolnik claims, has led to a “generation of men and women in debt.”<\/p>\n

While each country that Rolnik visited has its own unique history, certain upheavals in the global economic scene\u2014like the fall of the Soviet Bloc, and structural adjustment programs that spawned from the 1944 Bretton Woods conference<\/a>\u2014have altered housing policies in a similar fashion: large construction enterprises create the bulk of new housing units while private banks stoke housing demand by providing cheap credit, which in turn increases housing prices. When the bubble burst in 2007, it left millions of households that were unable to pay off overvalued mortgages in its wake.<\/p>\n

The case of Astana, Kazakhstan<\/h3>\n

One case that Rolnik\u00a0mentions is the rise and fall of Kazakhstan’s new capital, Astana, which she calls an “experiment in designer architecture.” Formerly part of the Soviet Bloc, the Kazakh economy’s about-face from communism to neoliberalism pivoted on Astana, which became a testament to the country’s revitalization. Petrodollars propelled the once-isolated city to unprecedented foreign investment. Now, Astana boasts a flashy skyline fraught with futuristic commercial towers, luxury hotels, and shopping centers like the Khan Shatyr: a 500-foot tall tent which houses, along with designer clothing outlets, a miniature golf course and an artificial beach resort.<\/p>\n

\"Khan<\/a><\/p>\n

Financial and construction industries flourished, and the Kazakh government spurred economic growth by expanding credit to lower-income families, encouraging tenants from Soviet-era social housing\u00a0to take out a mortgage.<\/p>\n

Prosperity was short lived, however. Astana’s population swelled, and the\u00a0free market failed to provide sufficient affordable housing; as a consequence, precarious self-built housing exploded. Meanwhile, deregulation in housing laws allowed privately-built units to be\u00a0sold while still in the blueprint stage. And when the global housing crisis struck, Kazakhstan crumbled. Construction companies, most of which were foreign-owned, abandoned their housing projects, leaving families “without a home and without money.” Rolnik credits the “radical deregulation of the financial system” for the ensuing crisis that left countless families homeless and indebted.<\/p>\n

Housing in Brazil<\/h3>\n

A full\u00a0third of the book explores\u00a0Rolnik’s native Brazil. No stranger to the “housing-financial complex,” Brazil’s economic boom in the early 2000s gave way to dramatic hikes in housing prices; in Rio and S\u00e3o Paulo, for instance, housing prices soared at\u00a0twice the rate of inflation. Rolnik, however, addresses top-down initiatives aimed to make housing more affordable. She criticizes the most recent social housing program, Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/a> (MCMV), for increasing<\/a>, rather than mitigating, urban segregation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Launched in 2009, MCMV is described in the book as largely a political move: a R$100 billion nationwide project implemented\u00a0on the eve of an election year. Housing resources became a federal matter, thus highly politicized, and when Dilma Rousseff<\/a> won the 2010 presidential election she became the “mother of Minha Casa,” nicknamed Minha Casa Minha Dilma.<\/p>\n

\"Minha<\/a><\/p>\n

Similar to Kazakhstan and other case studies mentioned in the book, Brazil’s housing reform promoted individual homeownership through subsidized mortgage credits. On the supply side, private consortiums jockeyed for publicly-funded contracts to build MCMV units. To little surprise, winning consortia were often munificent campaign donors.<\/p>\n

Construction firms minimized their costs and built MCMV units on the cheapest land available. Consequently, MCMV recipients were relocated to hastily-built housing on the urban periphery, where jobs were scarce and transportation to city centers<\/a>\u00a0virtually non-existent.<\/p>\n

Rolnik likens Brazil’s MCMV to Chile’s Viviendas Econ\u00f3micas program:\u00a0an experimental initiative\u00a0put in place in the 1980s under the military dictatorship. In a campaign to eradicate Chile’s informal settlements, or\u00a0campamientos<\/a><\/em>, the government subsidized mortgages to lower income families who moved into Viviendas Econ\u00f3micas housing units, which were built by private enterprises. While it was successful in reducing Chile’s housing deficit, the Viviendas\u00a0Econ\u00f3micas initiative, like MCMV, exacerbated spatial inequality as private construction companies built apartments on urban fringes.<\/p>\n

Global patterns<\/h3>\n

Relocating residents from precarious housing in urban centers to privately-built units on the periphery is a global phenomenon, Rolnik reports. Whether they are Brazilian favelas, Chilean\u00a0campamientos<\/em>, or Indonesian\u00a0kampungs<\/em>, originally informal settlements occupy land that is mired in\u00a0legal limbo.<\/p>\n

“When dealing with squatter communities in cities around the world, the category ‘illegal’ should not\u2014and cannot\u2014be made absolute.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In several of her case studies, Rolnik reveals how governments treat these communities as “reserved spaces” that can be repossessed at any time for capital venture. Often, governments have employed shock policies\u00a0to remove paralegal settlements. The earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in the Maldives, even sporting mega-events<\/a> in Brazil, China<\/a>, and South Africa<\/a> provide governments with a\u00a0carte blanche<\/em> to remove informal occupants while valuable urban spaces are ceded to private interests.<\/p>\n

It is in these highly-contested urban spaces where the war of places occurs.\u00a0As the\u00a0global economy has\u00a0shifted\u00a0to a more neoliberal model, financial assets like land and housing have been\u00a0consolidated, usually\u00a0to the detriment of poor families. Rolnik’s book\u00a0provides a collection of snapshots of\u00a0the political and economic structures that create an unequal playing field in\u00a0mobility and access to housing.<\/p>\n

Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> will host a public\u00a0book launch<\/a> of Rolnik’s\u00a0War of Place<\/em>\u00a0tomorrow, Saturday, March 5, as part of the community’s series of events<\/a> resisting demolitions and removal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For more than six years Dr. Raquel Rolnik toured the world as Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing for the UN Human Rights Council, obtaining testimonials and observing the striking shift in the concept of housing […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":27285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1267,1854,1282,1334,1329],"tags":[1720,11,65,282,627,855,26,203,878,157,438,744,671,141,301,28,10,421],"writer":[1863],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gentrificationwatch","8":"category-housingwatch","9":"category-research-analysis","10":"category-reviews","11":"category-by-international-observers","12":"tag-affordable-housing","13":"tag-forced-evictions","14":"tag-gentrification","15":"tag-housing","16":"tag-housing-bubble","17":"tag-housing-finance","18":"tag-housing-rights","19":"tag-inequality","20":"tag-international-comparison","21":"tag-minha-casa-minha-vida","22":"tag-periphery","23":"tag-policy-critique","24":"tag-president-dilma-rousseff","25":"tag-privatization","26":"tag-public-policy","27":"tag-real-estate","28":"tag-real-estate-speculation","29":"tag-segregation","30":"writer-sam-salvesen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81364,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27194\/revisions\/81364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27194"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=27194"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=27194"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=27194"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=27194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}