São Paulo, a multicultural megalopoli s
(19 million Paulistanos in cluding 5 million
Italian and 1 million Japanese residents)
with its high degree of ethnic integration
(and multi-ethnic gangs) and rich legacy of
buildings (Niemeyer, Lina Bo Bardi, Mendes
da Rocha) tempered by tropical lushness,
has a zero-tolerance, Giuliani-style Mayor.
Gilberto Kassab is investing in the
subway and bus system and leading
a crusade for a “Clean City”, with
billposting made illegal and buildings scrubbed clean of graffiti. At
December’s South American Urban Age
conference we heard that more is being
done to improve living conditions in
São Paulo’s favelas, which are largely
sprawling at the city’s outskirts, than
in Rio, which has one in every neighbourhood.
But the new Octavio Frias de
Oliveira Bridge over a river beltway is a
symbol of malaise in merely connecting
traffic jams from two neighbouring
districts. As many helicopters as in
NYC or Tokyo enable the super-rich,
taking harbour in gated housing and
malls, to skip these issues. One of the
items on Urban Age’s agenda is to
interrogate the interactions between
the formal and informal in cities and
examine how contested public space
can support, not restrict, civic wellbeing.
As well as the conscience of this
leading Latin-American business hub,
aided by a bill of 44 Brazilian speakers,
along with 12 presentations from other
Latin-American cities like Buenos Aires
and Santiago, and 40 from Europe and
North America, the latest event also
bravely took on board the urban futures
of a whole continent. Visitors experienced
the dramatic closeness of the
Paraisópolis favela valley site, with its
new school, to the luxury high-rises of
wealthy Morumbi. Condo dwellers subsidise
the favela, while the city council’s
upgrading policy is to integrate the
informal city and the legal, according
to Elisabete Franca, Director of Social
Housing. She led the Guarapiranga, a
waterfront scheme with 500,000 people,
230,000 of whom were in precarious
settlements, the biggest to date.
With their Columbia Graduate School
research lab, the Caracas-based
Urban Think Tank Slum Lab is retrofitting
the Grotão/Paraisópolis risk
area for her department, via tactics
to prefabricate, promote open-source
knowledge, think formally and grow
locally. In the ’90s some city dwellers
believed in social policies alone,
others in police repression. Now more
do battle with civic disenfranchisement
in the poorer communities, with
a recognition of their unique qualities
and a mix of actions. Filmmaker Tata
Amaral, whose poplar Antonia series
created a new representation of downtown
to help promote self-esteem,
said this still young city had to rethink
democratic processes to build trust.
Urban think tank assert that the rise of
violent favela/barrio urbanism is the
product of a society that has desensitised
itself to social sustainability.
Only 40 per cent of new construction
in São Paulo is by architects,
but a re-sensitisation happens when
architects act as facilitators and
interpreters of community needs, as
underlined by the first-rate presentations
of Alejandro Aravena, the Chilean
architect and director of Elemental
which is building social housing in
Santiago, Alejandro Echeverri’s plan
for Medellín in Columbia, Enrique
Norten’s new multi-use waterside park
plan in Mexico, and the new Slum Lab
book. As Eduardo Roja, the Brazilian
urban development specialist, pointed
out, this compensatory stance based
on a localising of creative knowledge
is vital to strengthen social capital in
a city with 39 municipalities, a fragmentation
in management and “no
long-term vision”. But Eduardo Jorge,
Secretary of the Environment, stressed
that the Mayor optimally worked like
a conductor of an orchestra across all
sectors. Many conductors are needed
for the Urban Age symphony, which
is about holistic results achieved top
down and bottom up. Lucy Bullivant