Urban Consortium Operations in Balneário Camboriú: the distortion of the principle of solo criado

Abstract

Urban Consortium Operations (UCO) were popularized in Brazilian master plans after the enactment of the City Statute, mainly because of their promise of converging public and private interests in the implementation of large urban projects. This instrument is based on a principle known as solo criado: the separation between building rights and property rights, distributing the costs and benefits of urban development and regularizing the offer of incentives to the real estate market by demanding counterparts. Nevertheless, its results are polemical and have been little explored in smaller municipalities. The case of Balneário Camboriú (Southern Brazil), the object of this research, demonstrates the distortion of the solo criado principle by allowing the utilization of the construction potential generated by the UCOs outside the perimeter of the projects. Consolidating real estate expansion fronts, the instrument contributes to local high-rise building and has not generated many benefits to the city as a whole.