Additional building rights certificates: a funding mechanism for urban partnership operations or a speculative instrument?

Abstract This paper presents the urban partnership operations (OUCs) as public-private alliances that generate public value developed in the context of globalization and financialization of the real estate market, fiscal constraints and primacy of private interests in the production of urban space. With the City Statute, additional building rights certificates (CEPACs) are now the OUCs main financing mechanism. CEPACs are subject to much controversy since their establishment because of a possible speculative financial component. Fifteen years after their first auctions, they must now be analysed less theoretically and based on the prices and volumes made in their negotiations. Based on the history of auctions and conversions of the OUCs Faria Lima and Água Espraiada (both from São Paulo-SP), the paper presents advances in the reflection on the real possibilities of this instrument, minimizing its speculative feature as currently predicted, and indicates the need for public governance over OUCs in relation to the generation of public value and the guarantee of the right to the city.