Study integrates line of research whose focus is the sociodemographic look at the “macrometropolis of São Paulo”
In Santos, “the sky is the limit”, in the expression used by demographer Luiz Antonio Chaves de Farias in reference to the intensification of real estate speculation in the municipality, a phenomenon supported by urban legislation instituted, almost explicitly, to meet the interests of this market. “The most practical example of this was the failure to establish a size limit for buildings in the island area of the city, where buildings are increasingly taller, with fewer residences and larger sizes, aimed at local or plateau elites. It is a speculation that extends mainly to the edge of other central municipalities in Baixada Santista.”
Luiz Antonio Farias analyzes this process in detail in the first chapter of his doctoral thesis, “Population mobility and production of urban space in Baixada Santista: a sociodemographic look at its trajectory in the last 20 years”, supervised by professor José Marcos Pinto da Cunha, from the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH). “The thesis was developed within the scope of my advisor's research project, which aims to produce a sociodemographic look at the metropolitan regions that make up what we have called 'São Paulo macrometropolis' or 'São Paulo city-region' - which involves the regions of São Paulo , Campinas, Baixada Santista, Vale do Paraíba, North Coast and Sorocaba.”
The author of the research observes that in the 2000s there was a cycle of economic growth, with a policy of increasing the minimum wage, large investments in infrastructure and an increase in real estate credit, which was reflected in the high rate of production in the built environment of cities. , including those in Baixa Santista. “But one fact that draws attention is that, in certain census sectors of Santos, household growth rates were negative. This situation is common in terms of population – more inhabitants may die (or emigrate) than are born – but in terms of households, no.”
In Farias' opinion, the drop in housing in Santos occurs because many of them were replaced by buildings aimed at the public with greater purchasing power, with few housing units and many common leisure areas. “Another effect of this process is on the price of urban land, which was measured through the municipality’s market value plan. In some cases, with all the reservations inherent in updating the type of administrative record, we found that the price per square meter on the Santos waterfront corresponds to around 10 times that charged in the northwest zone of the city.”
The expected consequence, says the demographer, is that the lower classes find themselves excluded from living in the best locations. “During my bibliographical research, I was able to see that even the most remote areas of the beach in Santos, previously neglected by the real estate market, also began to be valued, meaning that social groups with lower purchasing power do not, in fact, have the option of residence in the city. To offer a dimension of the problem, in the five-year period 2005-2010 alone, according to the 2010 Census, around twenty thousand people had to migrate to peripheral municipalities in the region.”
Luiz Antonio Farias highlights that this exodus from central areas towards more peripheral areas is recurrent in other metropolitan regions of São Paulo and Brazil, but that it takes on greater drama in the RMBS. “In addition to the high price of land and elitist urban legislation, we also have a lack of space for new construction throughout the Baixada Santista area, especially in the metropolitan core (Santos, São Vicente, Cubatão and Guarujá). According to data from the Santos Metropolitan Agency, in 2014, only 5% of the RMBS territory was capable of expanding the built environment.”
Another factor that limits the housing options of younger and lower-income families, adds the researcher, is that a large portion of the housing stock in the region is for occasional use (second home, summer vacation, seasonal rental, etc.) and is in the best locations, which concentrate urban infrastructure, employment opportunities and services and leisure offers. “In Bertioga, Mongaguá and Praia Grande, occasional-use homes account for more than half of the total. And, in central municipalities like Santos, 100% of occasional-use homes are in the blocks immediately close to the beach.”
Myth of aging
Farias studied the sociodemographic dynamics of RMBS through indicators such as population growth rate, aging index and migration rates, associated with its regional insertion and production of its urban-metropolitan space. He states that, in general terms, his results confirm sociodemographic trends previously highlighted, such as by Alberto Jacob, in article published in Jornal da Unicamp in 2005. “There is a continued decrease in the population growth rate (1,2% per year between 2000 and 2010) and an increase in aging rates (from 114,4% in Santos, in 2010, to an average in Brazil of 44,8 .XNUMX%) and the metropolitan peripheralization process.”
According to the demographer, the most perverse effect of this process is the intensification of socio-spatial segregation, which has also been portrayed in other research and now in the Atlas of “Metropolitan Region of Baixada Santista: socio-spatial diversities at the turn of the 21st century”, organized and published by him and his advisor José Marcos Pinto da Cunha, simultaneously with the writing of the thesis. “An effect that is still little talked about is the association between the real estate speculation process and the aging population of the region. There is indeed an aging process, but common sense attributes it to the myth of the migration of 'old people', especially from the plateau – and preferably to Santos – in search of a better quality of life.”
Luiz Antonio Farias observes that this flow persists and appears increasingly aged, but that its demographic weight does not justify the myth, as is clear in the data presented in the thesis referring to the five-year period 2005-2010. “Negative balances are concentrated in younger age groups (for example, from 15 to 29 years old, at a rate of -0,8% per year), while elderly groups (60 years old and over) also have a negative rate , -0,2% per year – it was expected that, at least for local elderly people, the rates would be positive. We can say, even emphatically, that aging is essentially linked to the departure of younger families, who are left without housing options due to real estate speculation and exorbitant prices.”
Commuting mobility
As a novelty, the doctoral research points to the tendency of a reduction in this migratory movement from the central areas to the more peripheral areas of the RMSB, and also in long-distance flows, such as those coming from the Northeast. “However, despite the low volume of what we call residential mobility, commuting mobility for work or study has only been increasing. Between 2000 and 2010, there was an increase in Baixada Santista of almost 58 thousand individuals of working age who left their municipality of residence for such activities. This attests that, although the process of peripheralization remains active in the RMSB, it was not accompanied by the regional deconcentration of economic activities: 33,7% of intrametropolitan migrants continued to work in the municipality of previous residence.”
In relation to commuting flows, another novelty brought by Farias is the regional insertion of Baixada Santista in the “macrometropolis of São Paulo”. “Although commuting is mainly linked to socio-spatial segregation in the region, the data show an elitization of the occupation process on the north coast (Guarujá and Bertioga shores) and even on the south coast (such as Praia Grande). Much of this occupation is linked to the intrametropolitan migration, to the aforementioned areas, of the middle classes and local elites of Santos. But we also have that older population that migrates from the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, in flows that are larger than those coming from the region itself.”
There are also, according to the researcher, those who come to live in Baixada Santista, but continue to work on the plateau. “In Praia Grande, for example, 18,5% of people who migrated from a city in the macro-metropolis region continued to work there at the time of the research. In other words, we can say that some municipalities in Baixada, in addition to being metropolitan outskirts, simultaneously fulfill the role of 'elite outskirts' of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. Elite, as participating in this process is not for everyone, due to the costs of frequent travel (fuel, tolls, etc.). However, the occurrence can be explained by advantages such as the ease and speed of access through the Anchieta-Imigrantes System, the popularization of home office and the natural amenities of the region.”
'Pre-salt phenomenon'
The author of the thesis admits that the pre-salt issue, although it permeated his work, ended up representing a gap, as it was necessarily based on data from the 2010 Demographic Census. “We know that, at that time, the pre-salt phenomenon it was still very incipient in Baixada Santista, since its discovery in the Santos Basin dates back to 2006-2007. Therefore, it could not be captured in terms of the magnitude of its impacts on regional sociodemographic dynamics. An aggravating factor was the failure by IBGE to carry out the traditional Population Count in the intercensal period, in 2016, which would have offered a clearer overview of the effects of the pre-salt in the region.”
In any case, when analyzing data from 2010 in Baixada Santista, Farias observed a positive fluctuation in immigrants engaged in activities linked to the extractive industry, going from 1.160 individuals in 1995-2000 to 2.240 in 2005-2010. “The interesting thing is that this happened during a period of falling migration volume. A frenzy was observed with the prospect of investments in the region by Petrobrás and the consequent increase in municipalities' revenue from royalties. In Santos, in the Valongo neighborhood, there was an increase in the value per square meter due to the prospect of building three Petrobrás office towers on the site.”
According to the demographer, only one tower was built and the hotel built around the project has a low occupancy rate. “In addition, logistical operations in the Santos Basin are mostly carried out by the city of Rio de Janeiro, which mitigated the expected impacts on Baixada Santista. In any case, the increase in revenue collection royalties It is already a reality in some municipalities, with only demographic data from 2020 missing to be able to see the impacts on the production of space and population dynamics in the region.”
Luiz Antonio Farias concludes that, more than the pre-salt phenomenon, the economic dynamic that stood out in determining the demographic results in the RMBS was that of the real estate market, in the period 2000-2010. “If capital surpluses were previously reinvested in industrial production itself, now they are reinvested in the real estate market, where rents only increase in value, unlike industrial profits. This was what guided this frenetic construction of projects seen during the period studied and which seems to have continued even in the post-2014 economic crisis cycle, as we were able to see during visits to the region.”