84 Co l l a n a Alleli / Res ea rc h Co mi t ato s c ient if ic o Edo a rd o D ot to ( I CA R 1 7, Si racusa) A nto nella G rec o ( I CA R 1 8, Ro ma) E m i l i o Fa ro ld i ( I CAR 1 2, M i l ano) N i co l a F lo ra ( I CAR 1 6, N ap o l i ) B ru n o M es s in a ( I CAR 1 4, Si racusa) S tefa n o M u na r in ( I CA R 21, Ve ne z i a) Gi o rg io Peghin ( I CAR 1 4, C ag l i ari )
IS BN 978-8 8-6242-51 8-6 Fi rst editio n March 2 0 21 Pri nted in Italy © LetteraVentidue Ed i z i on i © C orinna Del B ianco No pa rt of this bo o k may b e rep rod u ced or tra n sm i t te d i n a ny form o r by any mean s, i n cl u d i n g p h otocopyi n g, eve n fo r i nte r n a l or educatio nal use. P h otocopyi n g a b ook, p rovi d i n g t h e m e a n s to photoco py, o r facilit ati n g th i s p ra cti ce by a ny mea n s i s s i m i l a r to com mitting thef t an d d a ma gi n g cu l tu re. Whe re not indicated th e p h otos a re by th e a u th or, i n c l u d i n g t h e cove r image C over image: “Maria Ed u a rd a on th e roofs of Ja rd i m Fi l h o s d a Te r ra” Book design: Martina Di stefa n o Let teraVentidue Ediz i on i S . r. l . Vi a Luigi Spagna 5 0 P 9610 0 Siracusa, Italy www.letteraventidue.com
Index
7
Foreword
11
Spontaneous Living Spaces research project in Jardim Filhos da Terra
Elisabete França
Introduction
15
The relevance of São Paulo in the informality issue Chapter one
25
The São Paulo case study Chapter two
75
Conclusive observations Chapter three
113
Interviews
135
Essential reference list
Appendix
Foreword Elisabete França Executive Secretary at Housing Secretariat of the city of São Paulo Housing Superintendent at Housing Secretariat of the city of São Paulo (2005 – 2012)
T
he purpose of this reflection is to discuss the myths that exist about precarious settlements and show how the concept has been taking new forms over the years. We are currently building new thinking on how to operate in these vulnerable territories, which is the construction of urban thinking of the twenty-first century, a demand of the twentieth century post-modern urban planning. Urbanism in the twenty-first century starts from the real, existing city knowledge. That is where it distances itself from the modern urban planning that drew on the non-existent. The pre-existences are the result of collective efforts from the families who have built and projected what may not appear at first glance, but they are important because they represent individual and collective developed efforts, even informally, for the construction of the city. Contrary to what has been extensively broadcasted, the periphery is not a de-characterised and segregated place, where people are unhappy, do not have access to entertainment, and live isolated from the good things of the world. What has been observed is that the consumption patterns and habits are the same, differing only in quality of products and price paid to access to them. Thus, it is important to understand that when we make plans and projects for the Informal City, we are not working with areas where people have no history, no social networks, no pre-existences, or nothing. The difference is in having more or less access to services and equipment. This is vital because sometimes people speak of the poorest parts of the city as an apartheid place, segregated suburbs, and that is not the case at all. 7
Venezuela
Suriname French Guyana
Guyana Colombia
Amapá
Roraima Ecuador Amazonas
Perù
Paraíba
Piauí Acre Rondônia
Tocantins Mato Grosso
Rio Grande do Norte
Ceará
Maranhão
Pará
Bahía
Pernambuco Alagoas Sergipe
Brasilia Bolivia Mato Grosso do Sul Chile
Goias Minas Gerais
Paraguay
Paranà
Rio Grande do Sul South Pacific Ocean
Argentina
Espíritu Santu
São Paulo
Rio de Janeiro
Santa Catarina
Uruguay
South Atlantic Ocean
Ecuador
Brazil map (data IBGE graphic elaboration by the author)
The relevance of São Paulo in the informality issue Chapter one
A glance at Brazil and its main experiences of housing policies São Paulo is the largest city of Brazil, with over 12 million inhabitants (estimated by Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) in 2019 based on the 2010 census), and is followed by Rio de Janeiro, with over 6.7 million (IBGE 2019), and Brasilia, the capital, with more than 3 million. The country, which covers an area of more than 8.5 million km2, has a population of over 211 million inhabitants (IBGE and World Bank 2019) and includes 5,570 (IBGE 2016) municipalities. It has seen an increase in population density since the beginning of the 1900s, currently 22.43 inhabitants per km2 (IBGE 2010), with a very strong urbanisation process that led over 183 of the 211 million inhabitants to live in cities in 2019 (World Bank 2019). The GDP per capita is also increasing rapidly, especially since the end of the military dictatorship,1 and has reached over R$34000 in 2019. These numbers can only give an idea of the vastness of a territory and its population, marked by a history of inequalities and discontinuities. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the country has undergone a profound transformation; in 2003, the then President Lula announced an imminent and spectacular growth of the economy (Wisnik, 2016), and indeed, owing also to the discovery of important offshore oil fields along the coasts of Rio de Janeiro, the country was not affected by the international economic crisis of 2008, thus becoming the destination of numerous professionals and workers in the following years. It is characterised by a profound diversity and division that involves many points of view: from the cultural origins of the inhabitants, to the distribution of wealth and to the relevance of settlements and cities. 15
Jardim Filhos da Terra - Spontaneous Living Spaces in São Paulo
C
1996 0 built plots
2000 81 built plots
0%
85 %
Timeline of the block’s evolution (by the author)
As Clair reports in the interview, the neighbourhood is in the same situation as many others built from the 1980s onwards, when the strong urbanisation process of São Paulo began. Many of these new neighbourhoods, albeit in a precarious way, have basic sanitation, water, electricity, sewage, garbage collection, public transport, asphalt, public services (such as a health unit) and mail services. Of these, the precariousness she highlights is that, for example, they may not have a continuous supply of water, unlike the richer neighbourhoods which are located in peripheral areas of the city, helping to widen the country’s social divide. As Clair also explains, neighbourhoods like Jardim Filhos da Terra are the city; yet they are stigmatised as ‘special’ neighbourhoods, when in reality the minority is the one residing in the more ‘advanced’ and wealthy neighbourhoods. The regularisation movement has gained important achievements over time, including the installation of electrical, water and sewage systems in 2002, works that were completed in 2004 and the paving that began in 2008.
32
The São Paulo case study
C C
C
C
C
2012 96 built plots
late 2012 14 floors under construction
100 %
15 %
People and life in the neighbourhood The families that moved to Jardim Filhos da Terra in the 1980s came mainly from the states of the north-east, in particular from the state of Bahia, where the largest sugar cane plantations were in which slaves were employed. Sugar was of great value, and African slaves were shipped from Angola, another Portuguese colony, and with only 40 days of navigation they landed in Rio de Janeiro. Slaves were captured in the colonies of the African continent: both in Angola The families that moved and in present-day Mozambique, to Jardim Filhos da Terra from where they came mainly by in the 1980s came mainly land. Today, both, like Brazil, are from the states of the Lusophone nations and part of north-east, in particular the Community of Portuguese from the state of Bahia Speaking Countries (CPLP) or Comunidade Lusófona.4 Due to the living and working conditions to which they were forced, the slaves had a very short life, but they brought their culture, music, dances and religions with them. 33
Jardim Filhos da Terra - Spontaneous Living Spaces in São Paulo
Day
Night
Florentine House
34%
30%
Villa Foscari
10%
10%
Humboldt House
25%
23%
Hotel Tassel
37%
25%
Robie House
5%
6%
Stuttgart Siedlung
34%
49%
Villa Savoye
32%
12%
Le Case Italiane
58%
22%
Villa dall’Ava
21%
19%
96
Conclusive observations
Circulation
Service
Exceptional
16%
20%
0%
29%
51%
0%
24%
19%
9%
30%
8%
0%
61%
13%
15%
10%
7%
0%
43%
13%
0%
13%
7%
0%
42%
10%
8%
97
Interviews Appendix
In 2012, two people were called to tell their point of view on the neighbourhood with video recordings: the first was Claudio Chaves, 50, a professional community leader and teacher; the second Ninete Pereira, 43, also a community leader and housewife. The third important contribution is the written interview carried out in 2015, with a person who was a turning point for research. In fact, Clair, the interviewee, came into contact with the research on Jardim Filhos da Terra in 2014, following the web publication of an extract of it. Clair, as already mentioned, was the first child born in the neighbourhood in 1984, and browsing through the published pages she discovered a historical photograph of the neighbourhood’s football team in which her father was portrayed. After contacting the author via Facebook, a relationship and friendship developed that led Clair, first, to visit Italy, to participate in a competition on the cultural heritage of her neighbourhood as part of the Florence Youth and Heritage Festival – official parallel event to the ICOMOS 2014 General Assembly in Florence, Italy – coordinated by the author herself, and later to return to Italy to carry out specialisation studies at the University of Venice. In a few years, thanks to a research that enhanced her neighbourhood, her life changed, and now she lives in Bologna, where she has a wonderful baby, named Bernardo, with her husband Luca. At the time of the interview Clair was 31 years old, and, in addition to studying, she worked in the field of education in São Paulo. In the following pages the conversations and the interview are reported.
113
Jardim Filhos da Terra - Spontaneous Living Spaces in São Paulo
Claudio Chaves 50 years old
Portrait of Claudio (by the author)
H
ere where we are, the region is called Tremembé. With the political subdivision of the city, São Paulo was divided into 31 sub-municipalities. Within these 31 subprefectures are Jaçanã and Tremembé. It has been two or three years since Tremembé was disconnected from Jaçanã. So today we are the Tremembé region. This region of Tremembé, it has been going through a process of political reorganisation. That is, today the municipal housing secretary has a project that we are calling PROJETO Cabuçu DE CIMA which is a project that is specifically thinking about the Tremembé region, that is, urbanisation, community, revitalisation, land tenure, so there is a 114
A
qui onde nos estamos, é denominado a região do Tremembé. Com a subdivisão política da prefeitura de são Paulo, são Paulo foi dividido em 31 subprefeituras. Dentro dessas 31 subprefeituras, ficou o Jaçanã e o Tremembé que é nessa região. Tem uns dois ou três anos que o Tremembé foi desligado do Jaçanã. Então hoje nós somos a região do Tremembé. Essa região do Tremembé, ela vem passando por um processo de reorganização política. Ou seja, hoje a secretaria municipal habitação, ela tem um projeto que nós estamos denominando PROJETO Cabuçu DE CIMA que é um projeto que ta pensando especificamente
Interviews
whole complexity (complexibility - does not exist ...) because our neighbourhood, the Tremembé region, is already at the limit with the city of Guarulhos. What divides us from the other municipality is just the river, which is named the Cabuçu river. Our region, if you look at it from the geographical point of view, is totally disconnected from the city of São Paulo. It is important to say this. Because on the one hand we have the Serra da Cantareira, which is this whole complex of green areas, right? Preservation areas. On the other side, we have the municipality of Guarulhos. So we were pushed, pushed, pushed until the limits the city reached where it will not grow any more than it already is. I mean, if São Paulo will grow in 10 years, if it will grow as a metropolis, our region will remain as it is. It has two simple looks. It has a look that I consider positive and it has a look that I consider negative. The view that I consider positive, from the region, is that we will continue to be a neighbourhood: dormitory, so we will not have large flows of transport, we will not have major deforestation, we will not have major invasions, great destruction of the mountains. And from other areas that are considered important areas for the preservation of the environment, right? This will ensure for us residents here a better quality of life, for example, for those who live in the centre of São Paulo, in the south zone of São Paulo, which is the financial heart of
a região do Tremembé, ou seja, urbanização, comunidade, revitalização, regularização fundiária, então tem toda uma complexidade (complexabilidade – não existe...) porque o nosso bairro, praticamente, a região do Tremembé, ela já está no limite com o município de Guarulhos. O que nos divide do outro município é apenas o rio, que é o rio Cabuçu, ta aí o nome Cabuçu de cima. A nossa região, se você for olhar do ponto de vista da geografia da região, a nossa região ela é totalmente desconectada da cidade de São Paulo. É importante dizer isso. Porque de um lado nós temos aqui a Serra da Cantareira que é todo esse complexo de áreas verdes, né? Áreas verdes, né? Áreas de preservação. No outro lado a gente tem o município de Guarulhos. Portanto nós fomos empurrados, empurrados, empurrados até chegar o limite onde isso aqui não cresce mais do que já está. Quer dizer, se são Paulo vai crescer em 10 anos, se ele vai crescer enquanto metrópole, a nossa região vai permanecer como está. Tem dois olhares simples. Tem um olhar que eu considero positivo e tem um olhar um que eu considero negativo. O olhar que eu considero positivo, da região, é que nós vamos continuar sendo um bairro: dormitório, portanto nós não vamos ter grandes fluxos de transporte, nós não vamos ter grandes desmatamentos, nós não vamos ter grandes invasões, grandes destruições da serra. E de outras áreas que são consideradas áreas importantes para a preservação do meio ambiente, né? O que vai garantir para nós moradores daqui uma qualidade de vida melhor, por exemplo, de quem mora no centro de são Paulo, na zona sul de são
115