Economic Instability, Structural Change, and the Property Markets: The Late-1980s Office Boom in São Paulo

The author focuses on the functioning of the office market in the city of São Paulo in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Through the examination of the agents active in that market, and of the economic, social, and institutional frameworks within which these agents operated, the author aims to provide a coherent account of how global economic processes impacting the city interacted with locally specific circumstances to produce a cycle of ‘boom and bust’ which, if it is similar and coterminous with other such cycles elsewhere, is also firmly grounded on social, economic, and spatial processes at national and local levels. Thus, an interpretation is provided of how the growth of the share of services in the city's economy was combined with the high levels of instability of the Brazilian economy to generate a development boom and to produce significant changes in the urban fabric. The author's chief concern is with the nature of the actions of users, investors, and developers, with the sets of social practices shaping their response to market conditions, and with the interactions among wider economic processes, agents' actions, evolving social practices, and the city's spatial structure.