Characterizing the new real estate enterprises and the recent transformations in the urban space of Porto Alegre/Brasil

Porto Alegre is today one of the best Brazilian cities to live, according to research carried through in the last years. Worldwide known by hosting World Social Forum and for its municipal management, through the participatory budget – “Orçamento Participativo”. Despite the popular participation, the city passes for many transformations as for the real estate market. As well as in the main cities of Latin America it is possible to observe the increase of diverse forms of violence and unreliability, what lead up to the upper social classes to search for safer housings. In the last decades this auto-segregation has intensified the phenomenon of partner-space segmentation. Such isolation induces to creation of new real estate products mainly in the peripheral areas of the city - in many cases is not necessary to invest in initial infrastructure, such as water, light, sewer and pavement, like exemples - thus appearing the new urbanizations and the new peripheries, in previously considered degraded areas or far from the downtown. These areas start to shelter the gated communities, vertical or horizontal. Our objective is to analyze space and social transformations happened in the last years and in the urban space decurrent of the construction of the new enterprises in the city of Porto Alegre, having as reference its master plan.