Author(s)

A. Arantes Teixeira Jr

Abstract

The process of industrialization in São Paulo started in the late 19th Century, reached a climax in the 1970s and declined in the early 1980s, shifting the economic profile from industrial to service providers. Many plants were shut down, leading to a change in land use and the emergence of contaminated sites, many of them abandoned. In 2000 there was an estimated 2,500 potentially abandoned contaminated sites, whereas in 2003 the picture was about 4,000 sites out of around 16,000 potentially contaminated ones, which posed a threat to the environment and also raised social concerns since low income people, who cannot afford to rent a house, settle themselves on abandoned areas. In order to tackle these issues, both Local and State Governments have started to develop public policies targeting the management of brownfields, but the City Government only issued the f

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