Video

How real estate speculation is destroying culture

For years now, São Paulo has been losing historic buildings as urban land is increasingly treated as a financial asset. The case of the Procópio Ferreira Theater makes this painfully clear.

The theater opened in 1948 and, for decades, served as a space for culture, gathering, and collective memory. Today, it’s seen as a plot of land with “development potential.” For the real estate market, that translates into a simple equation: demolishing is more profitable than preserving, and a tower delivers higher returns than an audience.

Even before demolition officially begins, the deal is closed, the facade is stripped away, and the site is fenced off. The building becomes an urban void, waiting for a final decision.

The problem isn’t only cultural, it’s also urban, political, and environmental. Every demolition throws away energy, materials, and decades of use. Building “from scratch” emits more carbon than renovating. And even when the replacement buildings are new and efficient, a large environmental debt is created during construction.

Meanwhile, zoning laws change, preservation agencies come under pressure, and the city continues to be treated as an inventory of square meters for sale.

Want to go deeper into this topic?

Watch the full video and understand what’s really at stake when culture becomes a problem for the real estate market.

Disclaimer: The video is in Brazilian Portuguese, but simultaneous translation and subtitles are available in multiple languages.

UGREEN

This isn’t a course. And that’s why it works!

From time to time, someone asks: “So what exactly is UGREEN Pass about?” The short answer is: it’s not about watching classes. It’s about being able to use what you learn when a real decision shows up in front of you.

The Pass is an ecosystem. It includes themed schools, courses, tools, certifications, and a community that deals with real problems, the kind that show up in projects, inside companies, in proposals that need to close, and in budgets that actually have to make sense.

There’s no vague promise here about “changing the world.” There’s method. There’s process. There’s technical know-how. And there’s an approach that connects sustainability to economics, business, and practical decision-making.

A lot of people join thinking they’ll just find more content. What they find instead is structure: to think better, decide better, and make fewer mistakes in the real world. And yes, some people take a look and quickly realize this is denser than what they need right now. That’s fine. UGREEN Pass isn’t built to please everyone. It’s built for people who want to operate sustainability, not just talk about it.

Between March 9 and 13, we’re running the UGREEN Pass Special Week, with a very unusual entry condition. Before that, the best use of your time is simple: take a look inside and see whether this matches where you are in your career right now.

Come in, browse around, explore the schools, the topics, the approach, and decide calmly.

👉 Explore UGREEN Pass from the inside:

In a few days, I’ll explain how the Special Week will work. For now, the idea is just this: understand what the Pass really is. Because when the window opens, it won’t stay open for long.

Video

Why has buying an apartment become so expensive and complicated?

For many young people, entering adulthood has stopped being a natural process and has turned into a sequence of delays. Moving out of their parents’ home to live alone or with someone else now feels like a distant goal, especially when the intention is to buy a home. And this is true even for those who work and have a stable income.

This, unfortunately, is not due to a lack of effort. Housing has become increasingly unaffordable because the cost of living in cities has grown much faster than wages. Rent takes up a large share of income, mortgages have become a financial risk, and homeownership is no longer within reach for a significant portion of the urban population.

The problem cannot be classified as purely economic, it is also structural.

Over the past decades, houses and apartments have stopped being treated primarily as places to live and have instead come to function as financial assets. Investment funds, banks, and large developers purchase properties at scale, influencing prices and turning urban space into an investment product. Those looking to buy their first home are no longer competing only with other families, but also with global financial capital.

The outcome of these decisions is predictable: high-priced properties with low construction quality, located where speculation is most profitable rather than where daily life actually works. Poorly ventilated apartments that rely heavily on air conditioning, resulting in high energy consumption and low comfort, have become common. People end up paying twice: once to buy, and again just to live in these spaces.

In this context, sustainability stops being a differentiator or a luxury and becomes a practical response to a construction model that fails socially, economically, and environmentally. Building better with energy efficiency, thermal comfort, good natural lighting, and lower environmental impact has never been only an ecological concern, but also a way to correct an urban product that has become expensive, inefficient, and, above all, exclusionary.

Want to dive deeper into this topic?

Watch the full video to better understand why buying a home has become so expensive in today’s context.

Disclaimer: The video is in Brazilian Portuguese, but simultaneous translation and subtitles are available in multiple languages.