ABSTRACT
The industrialization and modernization of Salvador and its hinterland only began during the Second World War, and continued with the subsequent implementation of governmental measures for economic promotion in the 1950s. Government offices have neither a legal base nor an interest in subsidizing private property. Although the great boom in the building trade has fallen back because of the general economic crisis in recent years, there still seems to be an apparently unlimited demand for new buildings. The potential of self-help as part of a strategy for finding a solution to these problems can only be interpreted as a goal of research in the described context. Neither the economic situation of the population, nor the patterns of ownership, nor the state of repair of the big patrician residences, allow autonomic self-help to be a realistic solution. A valuable economic history of nineteenth-century Bahia is Calmon.
