The Condominization of Everyday Life: The Moralization of Living Space in the Camboa Residential

Abstract

This article offers a critical reflection on the lived experiences of residents in a housing complex built through Brazil’s Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) in the city of São Luís. The Camboa Residential Complex, inaugurated in November 2009 as part of the PAC Rio Anil project, was initially promoted as a revitalization effort meant to restore “dignity” to families previously living in stilt houses. Over time, however, the complex became a contested territory marked by drug trafficking, frequent gun violence, and execution-style killings, eventually acquiring a stigmatized identity and being colloquially dubbed “Carandiru” — a reference to the infamous São Paulo prison. Moreover, tensions emerged from the coexistence of residents originating from different neighborhoods, whose previous senses of territorial belonging contributed to ongoing conflicts within the complex. These divisions are frequently articulated by residents through the expression “mixing of favelas,” underscoring fragmented social integration.This paper focuses on how social relations are reconfigured within this newly constructed residential space — the product of a governmental attempt to impose a standardized model of housing (the apartment) and a spatial reordering of marginalized urban populations. Through an ethnographic lens, the study investigates how this model of “condominization” reshapes everyday life for families, especially those in the Rio Anil Camboa complex, and how it has been replicated in broader public housing policies. It examines how new forms of dwelling generate evolving relationships with space, the home, labor, income, and the very notion of property. These transformations are analyzed as part of a broader process I refer to as the condominization of social life among peripheral urban populations.lly.