A produção rentista da habitação em São Luís: as transformações da moradia, do espaço urbano e do capital imobiliário da República Velha ao Estado Novo

Abstract

Real estate capital is a powerful producer of urban space and has housing as the main commodity. Not being able to restrict space only to its physical character and housing only to its character of shelter, the implications of the performance of this form of capital illuminate contradictions of modern society. Through a dialectical materialist approach, the present work seeks to understand the production of housing in the city of São Luís (Maranhão), from 1889 to 1945 and its relationship with the development of the specificities of the local real estate market. Bibliographical and documentary sources were used, with predominance of newspapers of local circulation in the studied period and official reports of representatives and technical staff of the State and of private companies. The concentrated development of the national productive forces generated local situations that have similarities, but with dynamics for the real estate sector. The transformations occurred in the mode and relations in the housing production in the cities of greater economic development of the country did not occur with the same intensity in São Luís, being the provision of houses until the end of 1940 in charge of rentistas interests, constructions with mercantile relations and especially of self-construction