Pilot Project 2020-2022: “Spatial Methods in Action: Everyday Spatialities of Homelessness for Urban Sustainability”

The four-phase pilot project was carried out in São Paulo (Brazil) from late 2020 to early 2022 under the coordination of Prof. Dr. Fraya Frehse (University of São Paulo – SMUS Lead partner + Action 4 Speaker) and Dr. Ignacio Castillo Ulloa (Technische Universität Ber-lin – SMUS Scientific Coordinator). Addressing particularly the target 11.7. of SDG #11 (“provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities”), the project pursued two overall aims of, respectively an academic and practice nature: (i) to illuminate how spatial methods may enhance the relationship between homelessness and urban sus-tainability; and (ii) to develop as well as test a toolkit of spatial research methods suitable for professional practitioners (from NGOs to local government agencies to CBOs) who directly act upon the everyday of homeless people in the city of São Paulo.

Well aware that homelessness is widely absent from the UN SDGs regardless of the chal-lenge it represents for urban sustainability, even more so in Covid-19 times, the pilot project coordination Team was mean to show that methodological techniques sensitive to the so-cial and relational dimension of space could contribute to highlighting qualitatively alter-native dimensions of the homeless’ everyday life in Covid-19 São Paulo, which in turn could enhance the urban sustainability agenda. Therefore, the Team turned the everyday spatialities of homelessness into their research object – i.e., the daily orderings that men, women and children have made of the public places where they dwell in Covid-19 São Paulo through their bodies (i.e., both verbally and non-verbally) while making sense of their interactions with people, institutions and objects, with animals, plants, etc. in these same places. By and large, the pilot project had a fourfold structure: guiding question, guiding object of research, specific question and hypothesis  (Table 1):

  • Table 1. The driving structure of the pilot project (SMUS Action 4 Team)

Based on this rationale, the pilot project coordination Team started to develop and test a toolkit of spatial methods that could simultaneously (i) shed light on these everyday spatialities and (ii) become of practical use for practitioners devoted to the issue of homelessness in São Paulo. The whole process encompassed four temporally consequential phases (Figure 1):

  • Figure 1. The four-phase dynamics of the pilot project (SMUS Action 4 Team)

These phases were practically accomplished by a constellation of interacting actors (Figure 2):

  • Figure 2. A constellation of the interacting actors (SMUS Action 4 Team)


Coordination Team

 

Prof. Dr. Fraya Frehse

Dr. Ignacio Castillo Ulloa

Dr. Ignacio Castillo Ulloa

 


Student Team

 

 

 

Ana Carolina Martins Gil

Psychologist, PhD candidate in Social Psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). Master in Social Psychology from PUC-SP. She teaches Psychology at Universidade Nove de Julho (UNINOVE), and is a member of the Brazilian Network of Researchers on Homeless People (Rede PopRua).

Topics of Interest: Social psychology; social exclusion-inclusion; homeless children and adolescents; homeless population.

Links: Lattes

 

 

 

Anna Carolina Martins Silva

PhD student in Nursing at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), where she coordinates the university extension project “”Periferia dos Sonhos””; she also works on HIV/AIDS at the Medical School Foundation of the University of São Paulo and is an agent of Pastoral Carcerária. Bachelor (2012) and Master in Nursing (2012) from Unifesp, with experience in workshops with women in prison units in the city of São Paulo.

Topics of interest: Human rights; Health; Incarceration; Prisons; HIV/AIDS.

Links: Lattes, ORCiD

 

 

 

 

Caio Moraes Reis

PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of São Paulo (USP), researcher of the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS) and technical collaborator of the Municipal Secretariat for Human Rights and Citizenship (SMDHC) of the City Hall of São Paulo (PMSP). Bachelor in Social Sciences (2016) and Master in Political Science (2019) from USP, with experience as a census officer in the census of the homeless population in the city of São Paulo (2021).

Topics of Interest: Sociology of knowledge; sociology of everyday life; sociology of death; historical sociology; social research methods.

Links: Lattes, ORCiD, ResearchGate, Academia.edu

 

 

 

Ednan Silva Santos

PhD candidate in Humanities and Social Sciences at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). Bachelor in History (2015) from Santo André Foundation University Center, specialized in Philosophy and Contemporary History (2017) from the Methodist Faculty of São Paulo, and Master in Humanities and Social Sciences (2019) from UFABC.

Topics of Interest: Oral history; Memory; Human Rights; State; Public policies; Homeless population; Drugs.

Links: Lattes, ORCiD

 

 

 

Giovanna Olinda dos Santos Bernardino

PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Humanities and Social Sciences at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). Master in Humanities and Social Sciences and Bachelor in Sciences and Humanities and Public Policy at UFABC. Currently, she is working on the topic of love within homelessness.

Topics of Interest: Love; Homeless People; Gender; Ethnography.

Links: Lattes, ORCiD

 

 

 

 

Giulia Pereira Patitucci

Master’s student in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (USP), at whose Laboratory of Housing and Human Settlements (LABHAB) is a researcher. Bachelor in Architecture and Urbanism (2017) from USP and coordinator of policies for homeless at the Municipal Secretariat for Human Rights and Citizenship of the City of São Paulo (2019-2022).

Topics of Interest: Public policy; housing policy; city ​​and urbanization in Brazil; inequality and urban poverty; homeless.

Links: Lattes

 

 

Paula Rochlitz Quintão

Project Architect. Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism (2000) from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (USP), where she did her master’s degree in Project, Space and Culture (2012). Has experience as a census officer for the censuses of the homeless population in the city of São Paulo (2005-2021).

Topics of Interest: homeless people; urban sustainability.

Links: Lattes

 

 

Tales Fontana Siqueira Cunha

PhD candidate in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (USP) and CEO of Casa da Cidade. Bachelor’s degree in Law (2016) from USP, where he took his Master’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism (2020).

Topics of Interest: Public policy; Housing policy; City and urbanization in Brazil; Inequality and urban poverty; Homeless people.

Links: Lattes

 


Overall Lessons from Pilot Project

 

The four-phase Pilot Project “Spatial Methods in Action: Everyday Spatialities of Homelessness for Urban Sustainability”  pursued two aims. It developed and tested a spatial research-method toolkit for identifying the contributions that the everyday spatialities of homelessness could offer to the UN Urban Sustainability Agenda within the framework of diverse institutional settings related to the social assistance of street dwellers in São Paulo during the Covid-19 pandemic (November 2020-April 2022). To that end, eight graduate students, involved in the first three phases of the project, acted as “mediators” in the last phase. Drawing on the training delivered by Prof. Dr. Fraya Frehse in making use of spatial methods for analytically identifying the everyday spatialities of people dwelling in the streets, the students themselves trained twenty-six practitioners in developing analogous skills. With the aid of Prof. Frehse and using the method of “problem-posing education”, developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, the students encapsulated the formerly collected data on the everyday spatialities of homelessness (Phase 1) and the SMUS Toolkit (Phase 2) in an eight-session training course grounded on their ethnographic immersion in the practitioners’ daily work routine. During physically mobile and fixed “exchange meetings”, both students and practitioners were encouraged to simultaneously make strange what is familiar and familiar what is strange regarding their own (pre-)conceptions about street dwellers.

The overall outcome was a unique ethnographic interchange of glances between academics and practitioners full of lessons from and for all sides. An eightfold glimpse into the liveliness of the joint process of learning and knowledge co-production may be found in the following video excerpts. They offer a snapshot of crucial moments of the knowledge exchange between practitioners, students and professional academics during the project closing seminar, which was held at the University of São Paulo on 13 April 2022.

 

  • Lessons for practitioners – according to students:

Spokesperson for the SMUS Student Team: Ana Carolina Martins Gil

 

  • Challenges and potentialities for practitioners – according to students:

Spokesperson for the SMUS Student Team: Anna Martins

 

  • Lessons for practitioners – according to trained practitioner from a CBO:

 

Spokesperson for CBO: Robson Mendonça

Former farmer who, after losing everything, dwelled in the São Paulo streets. He currently heads the State Movement of the Street Population of São Paulo, which provides meals and professional training to the city street dwellers.

 

  • Lessons for practitioners – according to trained practitioner from the social-assistance sector of the São Paulo Municipality:

 Spokesperson for Municipality: Patricia Rodrigues

Holds a BA in Social Work and began to work as a socio-educational advisor at the Municipality in 2017, serving young people, children, and adolescents facing extreme social vulnerability. She is currently a social worker in the third sector.

 

  • Lessons for practitioners – according to two trained practitioners from NGO:

Spokesperson 1 for NGO: Igor Renato

A currently undergraduate student in Social Work who has been working as a socio-educational advisor for São Paulo street dwellers in the third sector since 2016.

 

Spokesperson 2 for NGO: Marivaldo Santos

Former street dweller, he afterwards became a community health agent and nowadays holds a BA in Social Work. Having been promoted from a social worker in the so-called Street Clinic to a technical interlocutor, he is a poet in his spare time.

 

  • Lessons for academics and practitioners – according to two professional academics:

Spokesperson 1 for professional academics: Dr. Maria Antonieta da Costa Vieira

As a social scientist with a PhD in Anthropology and co-editor of the first Brazilian anthology about the daily lives of homeless people in São Paulo (1992), she is a professional researcher, advisor and consultant on homelessness in Brazil.

 

Spokesperson 2 for professional academics: Prof. Dr. Carmen Santana

As a physician with a PhD in Psychiatry, she has coordinated university outreach projects in the field of mental health regarding homeless people, immigrants, and refugees. She is a professional researcher and advisor on mental health policies related to homelessness and social vulnerability.