War of Places - by Raquel Rolnik

Fruit of the reflections that urban planner Raquel Rolnik prepared during and immediately after the end of her mandate as rapporteur for the UN Right to Adequate Housing, War of Places addresses the global process of financialization of cities and its impact on the rights to land and property. housing for the poorest and most vulnerable. In the first two parts, Rolnik describes and analyzes recent transformations in housing and land policies in several countries around the world, within the framework of the expansion of a globalized neoliberal economy, controlled by the financial system, which have provoked a global process of insecurity of ownership. In the third, the urban planner explores the same issue, focusing on Brazil. The originality of the work lies in the global focus of the phenomenon, investigated from the direct experience of a Brazilian author looking at housing conditions around the world. Reading the recent evolution of housing and urban policies in Brazil - including during the Lula era - in the light of these global processes helps to think about the specificities and differences of the urban crisis in the country. The intertwining between housing policies and urban policy is also original. , articulated by the author through the construction of the hegemony of individual property and the transmutation of properties into assets.