Book on São Paulo in the 21st century contributes to comparative urbanism

Produced by the Center for Metropolitan Studies, the book sets out to make data for São Paulo comparable with data for other major cities of the 'South' and to help reformulate urban theories.

By José Tadeu Arantes  |  Agência FAPESP – The main urban theories were based on the experience of nineteenth- and twentieth-century central cities, especially New York, Chicago, Berlin and Paris. None of these ranks among the world’s four most populous cities today (Shanghai, Karachi, Beijing and Delhi), or the next four (Lagos, Tianjin, Istanbul and Tokyo), or even the four after that (Guangzhou, Mumbai, Moscow and São Paulo).

Indeed, 75% of today’s major cities do not match the pattern that inspired the theories. This means the models must be reformulated so as to take into account phenomena and processes that are typical of major cities in the so-called South – less a matter of physical geography than an economic, social, political and cultural category.

This line of thought underlies the book São Paulo in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques, a researcher at the University of São Paulo’s Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEM).

CEM is one of the 17 Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) supported by FAPESP.

The book is a reworking of A metrópole de São Paulo no século XXI: espaços, heterogeneidades e desigualdades. Published by CEM in 2015, this original version examined the city and metropolitan area from the standpoint of the social, economic and spatial changes undergone in the last 30 years (read more at agencia.fapesp.br/21434).

“The new English-language version is pretty different from the Portuguese-language original published in Brazil,” Marques told Agência FAPESP. “We’ve adapted it to the contemporary international discussion of comparative urbanism, which strives to integrate arguments about cities of the South into urban theory. All the essays were rewritten. Three chapters were dropped, and four new chapters were included.”

The book is divided into three parts: economic and social changes (production, social structure and labor market); demographic growth, migration and segregation; and urban spaces (housing, precarious environments and urban mobility).

“We set out to make São Paulo comparable with other major cities of the South, not as a case study but to contribute theoretical and analytical arguments arising from the study of São Paulo,” Marques said.

Marques emphasized urban mobility in his interview with Agência FAPESP. “Mass transit policy failed to keep up with the city’s growth, and was conditioned by an important transformation that occurred between the 1940s and 1960s, which was the transition from rail-based to tire-based transit, i.e. buses,” he said.

The predominance of buses explains the spread of clandestine settlements, which in turn were the main force behind São Paulo’s explosive horizontal growth in the period. Whereas rail-based transit systems produced settlements in the vicinity of stations and a very slow pace of transformation due to the high cost of implementing the infrastructure concerned, tire-based transit was highly dynamic – the bus driver merely turned a corner and a new area was added to the urban fabric. “The combination of these two elements – buses and clandestine settlements – drove São Paulo’s enormous expansion, just as it did in Mexico City,” Marques said.

Excessive growth in the number of private cars and socio-spatial segregation caused severe urban mobility problems, he added, with a strongly negative impact on the quality of life for most of the population.

“The population of São Paulo hasn’t been growing anywhere near so intensely since the 1980s. It continues to grow, of course, and the absolute numbers corresponding to percentage growth are large because the population is large, but growth rates have steadily declined,” Marques said. “So demographic growth is no longer a central issue from the standpoint of urban transformations, which have far more to do with specific processes of spatial production – zoning, property development and housing stock, for example. The metropolis remains highly segregated in terms of ethnicity and class.”

São Paulo in the Twenty-First Century
Editor: Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques
Published by: Routledge
Year: 2016
Pages: 246
For more information, visit routledge.com/Sao-Paulo-in-the-Twenty-First-Century-Spaces-Heterogeneities-Inequalities/Marques/p/book/9781138655607