Researchers seek solutions to São Paulo's urban mobility problems

Young architects who took part in borough residency program identify a possible link between the lack of mobility and the rise in informal employment

By José Tadeu Arantes  |  Agência FAPESP – Urban mobility has become a controversial issue requiring urgent solutions, and it has served as the focus for recent debates in São Paulo City, Brazil. With more than 8 million vehicles in 2015, the city is approaching the limit for a tire-based mobility model.

This topic was discussed in a presentation delivered by Maria Cristina da Silva Leme, Full Professor at the University of São Paulo’s School of Architecture & Urbanism (FAU-USP) during the Fifth Brazil-Germany Dialogue on Science, Research & Innovation, which took place on November 29-30 at the São Paulo City Council Chamber.

Entitled “The City of Tomorrow – Tackling Urban Challenges and Opportunities”, the meeting brought together German and Brazilian researchers and was hosted by the German Center for Science & Innovation (DWIH-SP), with support from Fundação Getúlio Vargas Projetos, the São Paulo City Council’s Parliamentary School, Germany’s Foreign Ministry and FAPESP.

“Three plans have defined the systems of thoroughfares and urban transit in São Paulo,” Leme told Agência FAPESP. “The relationship between these two systems was established in the 1930s in the Boulevard Plan (Plano de Avenidas para a Cidade de São Paulo) produced and implemented by the engineer Francisco Prestes Maia (1896-1965), who was the city’s mayor during the Estado Novo period, from 1938 to 1945.”

This plan called for a radial-concentric model with boulevards radiating out from the central zone and perimeter roads connecting them. Ideally, the radial boulevards could be extended without restrictions until they reached the outlying suburbs. This city planning concept was implemented at a time when São Paulo had only about 1.3 m inhabitants (1940) but was beginning a transition from its old status as the coffee barons’ capital to its new status as a major industrial metropolis, and large numbers of migrants from the countryside were settling on the outskirts (periferias).

“The urban mobility paradigm behind the Boulevard Plan continues to underlie technical and political decisions on city planning,” Leme said. “Similarly, several of the main thoroughfares built or rebuilt at the time, such as Avenida Nove de Julho and Avenida Rebouças, are still important parts of the city’s traffic system.”

During the same period, the city government also established a new form of river use via the creation of the Billings System. Reversal of flow in the Pinheiros River, a tributary of the Tietê, was a technical decision that had a significant impact. The reversal, made possible by the Traição step-up plant, diverted water from the Tietê into the Billings Reservoir. From there, the water plunged more than 700 m down the Serra do Mar escarpment to the Henry Borden hydroelectric power plant in the city of Cubatão, where it was used to generate electricity. Since 1992, pumping into the Billings Reservoir has been banned to protect the reservoir from the raw sewage dumped in the rivers, and such pumping is allowed only at times of heavy rain in an effort to mitigate flooding.

“In a few years, São Paulo was transformed from a town of single- and two-story houses into a city of skyscrapers and broad boulevards,” Leme said. “At the same time, trams gave way to buses and other tire-based forms of transit. This system requires much less infrastructure and investment to implement. It enabled the city to spread out, and by the 1950s, it was the world’s fastest-growing urban conglomeration.”

Also in the 1950s, the city government commissioned a program of improvements from US engineer Robert Moses (1888-1981). The new plan, which was the second of three mentioned by Leme, did not change the radial-concentric design but innovated by proposing a system of expressways. Implementation of these began in the 1960s, when Prestes Maia was again mayor of São Paulo, and intensified under his successor, Brigadeiro José Vicente de Faria Lima (1909-1969), with construction of the Marginal Tietê, Marginal Pinheiros, Radial Leste, Vinte e Três de Maio, Rubem Berta and Sumaré expressways, among others.

In December 1968, while Faria Lima was still mayor, work began on construction of a subway system. In that same year, a consortium of consultant engineers had produced the third plan, known as the Basic Urban Plan, designed as a framework for the city’s growth until 1990. With regard to urban mobility, the plan aimed to move beyond the strictly road-based model by adding 450 km of subway to the city’s 815 km of expressways. “High-impact technical decisions like these steadily shaped the city’s profile,” Leme said. “By 2016, the city proper had over 12 m inhabitants, and the metropolitan area had 21.2 m.”

Urban mobility in this city, currently one of the world’s ten most populous, is one of the issues studied by young architects Giuseppe Filocomo, Márcia Trento and Talita Micheletti in three eastern neighborhoods of São Paulo: Brás, Itaquera and Cidade Tiradentes, in order of distance from the city center.

“In this study, the worst situation detected was in the most distant neighborhood, Cidade Tiradentes. There’s no efficient transit system there – the last subway station going east is Itaquera. Residents of Cidade Tiradentes can get there only by bus that follows very long route. An important hypothesis raised by Filocomo, Trento and Micheletti, and yet to be verified, is that there’s a link between impaired urban mobility and increasing informal employment, with the population staying mostly in the neighborhood,” Leme said.

Architects in residence 

This study was performed as part of an architect-in-residence initiative. “The program was implemented by FAU-USP in collaboration with the São Paulo City Department of Urban Development (SMDU-PMSP). It selected 32 young architects who had graduated up to five years previously to work with administrators of the city’s 32 boroughs (subprefeituras) and contribute to the development of regional plans,” Leme said.

The residency was envisioned as continuing education after graduation, comprising 12 months of theory and practice in classes held on Monday through Friday from 8 am to 6 pm, with a month’s vacation. The total number of hours was 1,920, and the participants were required to be present at least 85% of the time: 480 hours consisted of lectures, seminars and research supervision at FAU-USP, and the rest (1,440 hours) had to be spent with borough administrators and at the Department of Urban Development under the supervision of its staff.

For Leme, the Metropolitan São Paulo Ring Waterway, also developed at FAU-USP, is an important contribution to efforts to tackle urban mobility problems combined with multiple use of waterways. Planned by the FAU Design Lab’s Fluvial Metropolis Group, with Professor Alexandre Carlos Penha Delijaico acting as principal investigator, the waterway ring will connect and make full use of the waterways that run through or around 14 cities in metropolitan São Paulo, directly creating 40,000 jobs and indirectly creating another 120,000.