Radical transformations in São Paulo

Research at a FAPESP-funded center highlights the intense changes that have radically transformed the social and spatial characteristics of Brazil's largest city.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – The city of São Paulo has undergone intense change in recent decades, radically transforming its social and spatial characteristics and making the urban fabric much more heterogeneous and complex.

Such is the evaluation of the authors of the book São Paulo: novos percursos e atores (sociedade, cultura e política) [São Paulo: new routes and actors (society, culture and politics)], published by CEM, the Centro de Estudos da Metrópole. Headquartered at CEBRAP (the Brazilian Center for Analyses and Planning), the CEM is one of FAPESP’s Centers for Research, Innovation and Diffusion (CEPID).

The book originated from a publication in Spanish organized by Lúcio Kowarick and Eduardo Marques, CEM researchers and professors at the USP Political Science Department. Entitled Miradas cruzadas: sociedad, política y cultura, the publication was part of a series on Latin American cities that was published last year in Ecuador  by OLACCHI (the Latin-American and Caribbean Organization of Historical Cities) in collaboration with the United Nations.

The undertaking proposed to Brazilian researchers by the equatorial publisher was to put together a book that would break the taboos about Brazilian cities—particularly São Paulo—that have persisted in Latin American literature over the past four decades.

According to Marques, in the 1970s, São Paulo was the subject of eloquent literature that resulted in a perspicacious assessment of the city. The negative effects of this literature on the Paulista metropolis in later years repeated the same discourse on the city, but the debate over it has become outdated.

“There are many processes that haven’t been going on in São Paulo for a long time, and yet the same impressions and diagnoses of the city continue—things left over from the 70s that don’t make much sense anymore,” Marques told Agência FAPESP.

According to Marques, one of the Latin American myths about São Paulo, which has already been incorporated into local debate, relates to  migration, which has slowed greatly in recent decades. “Few of São Paulo’s issues today are greatly impacted by the immigration question,” he said.
 
The overview of São Paulo presented in the new literature is of a city with slow growth, except in the suburbs, which have become more heterogeneous, explained Marques.

The state, in turn, is much more present in all parts of the city, including on the outskirts, although large differences in the quality of policies can be seen. In addition, social inequalities are evidenced in different ways and are more multifaceted and less easily understood.

“Access to public policy has become more equal, although some differences in the quality of public services have come back. And the urban fabric has become more heterogeneous, taking on a more complex form than before,” Marques affirmed.

The authors indicate that in recent decades São Paulo has improved from economic and urban perspectives. The population has more buying power and increased access to public services, as evidenced by the greater proportion of homes with water, sewerage, garbage collection, paved streets and lighting services.

They also point out that  low-income housing, illegal subdivisions and slums are more comfortable today than in past decades, even though they weren’t built to the recommended technical standards.

Because of these diverse and contradictory processes, the researchers point to the existence of an intense regional heterogeneity in the city, including on its outskirts, as well as the presence of many types of segregation and poverty at the Paulista city limits.

“The book’s main message, aimed at the debate on the dynamics of São Paulo’s habitation, day-to-day living, work, social inequality and cultural representations, is that the city has transformed itself immensely, becoming more heterogeneous, even in its forms of inequality,” affirmed Marques.

The Portuguese version of the book is larger and has a slightly different focus than the original Spanish version, which is aimed more toward the Latin American population.

Divided into 15 chapters, the essays in the book are mostly original and deal with issues ranging from traditional urban sociological topics, such as demographics, slums and communities on the outskirts, to new topics, such as the presence of foreigners in the city and the representation of the city in contemporary films. “These are new issues that aren’t included in textbooks on urban sociology,” said Kowarick.

According to Kowarick, some of the topics missing from the publication refer to the representation of the city in literature and the consumption of luxury goods in the metropolitan region. These topics are in contrast to those covered by most of the book, which focuses on aspects of urban poverty.

The authors of the book point out that São Paulo has a middle class with strong purchasing power and an upper class who consume luxury products. They also note that this well-to-do part of the population explains why the city has the largest fleet of private jets in the world and the third largest fleet of helicopters—after only New York and Tokyo—in addition to an extensive circuit of luxury retail stores.