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The international literature on the impacts of globalization on large cities has insistently pointed to the increase in residential segregation. Three mechanisms have been identified as the causes of this phenomenon: globalization, which by disseminating neoliberal ideas throughout the world, generated changes in the regulatory models and paradigms that guide urban policy; institutional reforms toward market liberalization and the property and housing market were undertaken in various countries; real estate prices became the central mechanism for distributing the population throughout the city, reinforcing income inequality as the determinant of urban spatial organization. At the same time, privatization exacerbated the growing inequality of access to the services and infrastructure that ensure urban well-being, especially with regard to quality. The wealthier areas, where those with greater purchasing power concentrate, have at their disposal an abundant supply of goods and services, whereas the areas populated by the poor are supplied with inferior goods and services. Further, globalization caused structural changes originating in the transformation of the productive base of the cities, creating trends toward social polarization. The social structure of the great metropolises is no longer represented by a pyramid, and is expressed instead by an hourglass where the middle positions narrow while the extremities widen. Simultaneously, there has been an increase in the distance between the average incomes of the higher and lower strata.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize real estate lease management of the São Paulo City Municipality (PMSP), the largest metropolitan region in Latin America, for the provision of public education, health and social assistance services.

In addition, the management was also evaluated by a direct analysis of the obtained data (lease paid, area of the property, agency, zone, region, neighborhood, contract date, etc.) and by statistical regressions.

The results showed that the following: real estate properties with the greatest discrepancy of amounts paid (when compared to other amounts paid by the city and the market) are in a pulverized category, called “Others”; PMSP faces difficulties tracking expiration dates, 18.9% of the assets are still in use, though present expired contracts; the category “Education” is the most expressive in expenses; there is a limit to the correlation between the size of the real estate and the lease price paid, and very large real estate do not have proportionally higher leases; the location only directly affects the lease value if it is in the central region of the Metropolis. There is no explicit relationship for leases in other regions.

This work is groundbreaking for helping to consolidate the literature on real estate management in developing countries. Factors that integrate and influence the management of real estate leases for government agencies in a Latin American metropolitan area have never before been reported in the literature.

Recent literature on housing studies (Batley, 1977; Bolaffi, 1983) fail to explain why the post‐1964 authoritarian regime in Brazil allocated a vast proportion of federal expenditure on housing to the urban middle classes concentrated in the South East region of Brazil. Since the creation of the National Housing Bank in 1964 state involvement in housing provision has been enormous. Housing has been one of the areas of general personal consumption in which successive governments for the past twenty years have been keenly concerned. Several million dwellings have been financed by the Federal Housing System since 1964. Currently there are a variety of programmes requiring direct public expenditure, including the provision of state and municipal housing, payments to trade union housing associations and state financed mortgages.

This chapter describes and discusses the main results of the successful off-hour delivery (OHD) pilot test in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, which took place between October 2014 and March 2015. The pilot engaged major stakeholders in urban distribution, including local authorities, shippers, carriers, and receivers, with the aim to determine what are the main requirements, constraints, opportunities, and threats for establishing a public policy related to shifting deliveries to late night in order to mitigate traffic congestion.

Differently from the former City of New York OHD pilot, here all participant companies were volunteers, with no need for cash incentives. The primary focus in São Paulo was on the issues of safety and noise, besides productivity aspects of travel time, truck speed, and delivery time.

The pilot was very successful, with no registered complaints of noise or security incidents. Travel speeds were obtained from global positioning system (GPS) tracking data and internal delivery systems. The chapter compares daytime and night operations and shows that productivity in some chains would improve significantly, but noise and safety must be carefully controlled to guarantee the expansion of the concept.

This chapter discusses the Brazilian redevelopment policy denominated urban operation. First implemented in São Paulo in the 1980s, it was included in the Brazilian federal urban legislation in 2001 as an instrument to promote the redevelopment of great urban areas through public–private partnerships. On the one hand, the local public administration would provide incentives to investments in a given project, especially by selling construction rights; on the other hand, the value captured would be reinvested in the same area, following a list of works that may include urban infrastructure and services. The main benefits expected are structural change without onus for the public administration; a more balanced urban growth, estimulating higher density in areas well served by urban infrastructure; and real estate valorization. Nevertheless, this chapter critically analyzes its early experiences in São Paulo, demonstrating an entrepreneurial and speculative logic of spatial production. In this sense, the chapter is structured in four parts. The first one presents the legal instrument, while the following two sections explore the two main aspects of its functioning: great urban projects and public–private partnerships. In the final section, the Urban Operation Faria Lima will be assessed, especially on its attempts to promote São Paulo as a global city. If it is not possible to generalize from this particular experience, it exposes the necessity of discussing how the instrument, now a federal policy, may be implemented in other Brazilian cities, which type of redevelopment it may promote and for whom.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impacts of different policies to address the water supply crisis experienced by the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo during 2013 to 2015 and evaluate the resilience of its water supply system for the coming years.

The methodology used in this study is based on the system dynamics simulation paradigm, combined with empirical data obtained from the regional water authority.

The results from the simulations suggest that the first layer of sustainability of the water supply in the region strongly depends on how the system’s operator responds to crises, in particular how it balances policies acting on the supply and demand for the resource.

Severe water crises typically make salient the perception that water is a finite and public resource. Long-term, sustainable management of the system requires a paradigm shift from widespread, old-fashioned beliefs that water is an infinite resource. It also requires active management to increase the system’s preparedness to withstand events caused by climate change.

This study contributes to the system dynamics and water resource management literature by presenting an integrative model to evaluate the resilience of a particular water supply system. Although there are previous studies on this subject, the present one focuses on the role that the water authority plays in a crisis and especially on a specific combination of policies to address an episode of crisis in a system unprepared for it.

The office market in São Paulo has been in recession since the year 2000. This situation came up due to two main factors: [i] the very aggressive attitude of developers during the period that comprises the year 1999 until 2000. At that time there was a very strong perception among investors that a new expansion era for new office buildings in São Paulo was about to begin and, moreover the Brazilian economy had started its recovery; [ii] The intense retraction of the Brazilian economy along with the political transition in 2002, which was mainly caused by the deterioration of the expectations in relation to the economic policies that would be performed by the new government.The recovery of the economic activity in the office building market firstly depends on the macroeconomic growth in Brazil and within the São Paulo metropolitan area. On the other hand, the expansion of the activity in the office buildings sector relies not only on the developers’ expectations of how and when the current vacant units will be rented, but also on the potential risk‐return composition of new buildings to be developed in the next years. This paper describes the economic scenario in which investment decisions to build new office buildings for rent in our local market are made and we also simulated both the necessary period of time for investments in the São Paulo office market to recover attractiveness and the time interval for the increase in the occupation rate absorb the actual vacant spaces. These simulations have taken place based on projections for the Brazilian GNP increase and they showed that for an annual increment of 4.5%, in 3 years could be reached both, attractiveness for new investment and occupation of vacant areas. For a 2.0% annual growth, the absorption of vacant spaces will take 4 years from now and new investment would be attractive only in 2012. Besides, we discuss the market prices fluctuations on the inflexion point where the transition from one phase of the real estate cycle (recession‐non attractiveness) to another (recovery‐attractiveness) occurs.

The history and development of urban transportation sysems in Brazil are reviewed in some detail. Early urban developments were served by rail and relied upon the rail transit systems but this has deteriorated since the 1930s as a result of high urban growth rate. Rail transport has chiefly been replaced by buses and micro‐buses, and latterly by cars but these have compounded rather than improved the situation. Industrialisation in the 1950s had a profound effect as existing networks were unable to cope with rapid urban development and growth. The social implications of transport costs, wasted travel time, the development of slum areas in inner cities, are considered and viewed as a poor reflection on an industrial and urban economy such as Brazil. The conclusion is drawn that the transportation system may ultimately jeopardise the continuity of Brazil′s industrialisation and modernisation.

This study aims to measure the degree of innovation of micro and small industrial companies in the West and Southwest metropolitan regions of the city of São Paulo, through a survey with 203 firms in the metallurgy sector.

The research had a quantitative and descriptive focus and used as methodology the validated and international approach known as Innovation Radar.

The degree of innovation in these micro and small companies is low; thus, the authors could not characterize them as systemic innovators. Most of them are little innovative, although some were classified as occasional innovators. The dimensions organization, processes, presence, supply chain and added value were the least developed.

To carry out similar studies in other Brazilian regions, to compare results and draw new conclusions, or even check if the degree of innovation present in micro-firms of these regions would not be even lower; to monitor the evolution of companies through a longitudinal study, to detect improvements in the degree of innovation; and to conduct a qualitative research that can deepen questions on the results of our study, such as the reasons why this type of company does not adopt innovative practices, or even the real suitability of the Innovation Radar model for micro and small enterprises (MSEs). We observed that some dimensions proved to be too sophisticated for these companies, such as R&D investments and the adoption of technological advances.

The study shows that the degree of innovation measured by the Innovation Radar is a useful and initial measure to check an innovative attitude in micro and small companies. It can also drive the actions that should be prioritized to stimulate the culture of innovation in SME. However, it does not allow to answer why this type of organization does not adopt innovative practices as a management attitude. Regarding its contribution, the authors expect that the paper may bring an awareness of managers and owners of micro and small companies for the need to foster innovative practices that can help increase the competitiveness and survival of this type of organization.

In Brazil, despite the fact that MSEs represent 98 per cent of the existing companies, and are mainly responsible for job creation, their leaders have a low concern for innovative practices.

The study contributes to identify the degree of innovation of these firms, which comprise a representative and strategic segment of the city’s economy, by checking to what extent an innovative attitude is effectively present in this sector. The theoretical contribution of this study regards the appropriateness of mechanisms or methodologies created to measure the degree of innovation in large organizations. Dimensions such as technological platform, brand, innovative ambience, degree of organization or systematization of processes, which are frequently considered for companies in general, and especially for large ones, are not sufficient or, instead, too sophisticated to allow an effective measurement of the degree of innovation in MSE. Thus, this study provides information for designing more effective ways to evaluate the degree of innovation that take into account MSE’s specificities, which can be considered innovation efforts, such as simple process improvements, professional development of teams, and actions to seize ideas and opportunities, among others.

When examining anecdotal evidence of migration processes, from historical and geographical perspectives, stories of individual immigrants that became successful entrepreneurs in the host country are commonplace. These narratives help individualize and romanticize the usually crude statistics of the increasingly common population movements across political borders. They also serve a number of purposes within the ethnic community, most of them associated with the creation and nurturing of the group's social capital. This critical ethnic resource has been consistently shown to provide significant benefits to immigrant communities, particularly in environments with higher levels of perceived risk (e.g., Portes, 1998; Martes & Rodriguez, 2004).