- Opinion - - SUP 601: Urban Politics, Planning, and Development -
Regional urbanization is a big issue. It demands a big response. Regional urbanization in São Paulo requires local leaders to think across sectors and across scales if they are to respond to the pressing issues of Latin America’s largest urban agglomeration
Rafael Marengoni is an urbanist and a Master’s in Urban Design Candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
(City of São Paulo, Encyclopædia Britannica)
This op-ed looks into the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, Brazil (Latin America’s largest urban area) as grounds to test approaches for regionalization, and ways in which regional governments might be successful in doing so.
Background: the Many “São Paulo”s and Their Overarching Issues To begin, a disambiguation is necessary: São Paulo is both the name of a state and a city (the capital of said homonymous state), and also commonly used to refer to the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo (SPMR). Beyond the Metropolitan Area, there is yet a fourth scale known as the Macrometropolis (SPMM), a region that comprises eight Metropolitan Areas. Each of these scales has its own unique administrative structure and jurisdiction, occasionally relying on hybrid solutions and shared initiatives.
(Image 2: “São Paulo: scales and disambiguation,” Rafael Marengoni)
Overall, the region is defined by its intense urban concentrations. The state of São Paulo accounts for roughly 20% of Brazil’s population while contributing directly to over 30% of its GDP. What is remarkable about this region is that across scales, as we zoom in from the macro- to the micro-level, the concentration of population and
resources increases consistently and exponentially:the city of São Paulo accounts for 25% of the state’s population and 35% of its GDP, the Metropolitan Region (SPMR) accounts for roughly 50% of the State’s population and 55% of the GDP, while the Macrometropolis (SPMM) accounts for roughly 75% of the population and 85% of its GDP. Such concentrations impact the ways in which these administrative units operate, and how public policy is crafted to attend to such an atypical region.
(Image 3: “ São Paulo:the metropolitan areas within the Macrometropolis,” Rafael Marengoni)
One of the main issues that affects the region today is density, and navigating effective public policy responses to its negative externalities. One of the most notable issues related to density is transportation, and with it comes an opportunity to encourage local leaders and state leaders to pivot toward a regionally-minded approach to local governance
(Image 4: “ Trânsito na 23 de Maio,” E stadão)
In recent decades, transportation in Brazil has largely meant road infrastructure. The country witnessed a stark shift towards the adoption of highways and roads to promote regional connectivity at the expense of maintaining its pre-existing rail system. At its peak, Brazil had over 38,000km of operational rail networks, which were phased out over the course of the 20th century — ceasing to operate for passenger transportation in the early 2000s and giving way to the hegemony of road systems. São Paulo was no different. In São Paulo, roads and cars played a huge role in the economy — from infrastructure development companies to auto and auto-parts industries. Roads were developed extensively throughout the state, and with them came cars and the increasing adhesion to an autocentric lifestyle. In the city of São Paulo, there were roughly 7.4 cars for every 10 inhabitants as of 2015. In the state of São Paulo, the number of registered vehicles jumped from 10.6 million in 2000 to 27.3 million in 2016. Road networks, however, did not accompany this growth —reinforcing drastic congestion and rendering São Paulo the world’s 5th worst congested urban area according to INRIX. INRIX estimates that in 2019 drivers spent an extra 152 hours
driving due to congestion. While this may seem like a problem local to the city of São Paulo, it is truly a regional issue demanding an approach that transcends municipal boundaries. There are over 500,000 trips per day that end in São Paulo originating from cities outside of the SPMR. Five cities in particular account for an estimated 416,097 trips to and from São Paulo: Campinas, Santos, Sorocaba, São José dos Campos, and Jundiaí. All of these trips necessarily take place by roads, further increasing regional congestion. However, regional transportation efforts are advancing the discussion of potential solutions through a multi-level collaboration for a new regional rail system (“Trem Intercidades,” or TIC), an initiative that may signal a shift towards regional integration.
(Image 4: “ São Paulo: the TIC and the cities along the network,” Rafael Marengoni)
The Roadmap to Collaboration The roadmap is not a road — rather, it is a railway. In 2013, the state of São Paulo began the process of coordinating a regional rail system that would connect the largest urban areas of the São Paulo Macrometropolis. These efforts would require three scales of collaboration between municipal, metropolitan and state governments.
(Image 5: “Shifting Regional Collaboration to intermediating Municipalities and State through the Metropolitan, ” Rafael Marengoni)
The framework for establishing different levels of collaboration and its potential to succeed depends on the ability of each of the stakeholders to navigate its own priorities in the project and negotiate compromises for the sake of executing the project’s larger vision. The priorities and perceived gains to doing so, of course, vary for the leaders across these scales. Yet, it seems that the metropolitan scale could reconcile the diverging approaches and interests of municipal and state governments, respectively. For the municipal leaders, local demands are front and center. The project’s main benefits for municipalities would be sharing costs of building capital projects and collecting additional revenue from the increased activity generated by this new transportation mode. This, however, could lead to local competition between municipalities striving to attract and secure stations For the regional train to be as efficient as possible, the total number of stations must be minimal — limiting the number of stops to strategic locations would optimize the frequency achieved by the
system. As municipalities attempt to make the case for their inclusion in the project, two main problems arise: the pace of planning, negotiation, decision-making, and project implementation is slowed,, and the quality of the end result is jeopardized. The “me first” logic represents a major challenge to achieving inter-municipal cooperation For the state government, the priority is project implementation regardless of accommodations that may be necessary at the municipal level, recognizing the need to negotiate with all involved municipalities in examining the project and its implications. The sense of urgency at the state level is also greater due to the fact that the state government is often a platform for launching former governors as candidates for presidential elections. Successful project implementation at the state level is political currency. If this trend continues there is an immense risk that the project could turn into a political tool and a discourse of success regardless of its effective implementation and benefits. This is where there is immense opportunity for metropolitan-scale actors to play a conciliatory role, navigating the urgency of implementation sought by the state and the internal demands that the municipalities may have. The metropolitan scale can become a platform to streamline communications between municipalities and the state, organizing priorities one tier at a time. In this sense, two events would occur: -
First, each metropolitan area would have a unique strategy for organizing around the TIC infrastructure. This would include funding mechanisms (in the form of public-private partnerships) and complementary services and adjustments, such as strategies to improve alternative connections between the cities that were not selected as station sites.
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Second, internal organization of the municipalities in each metropolitan area would permit the formation of stronger regional coalitions capable of pressuring and responding to the state’s urgency,further allowing the state to address these problems regionally instead of municipally, thus streamlining results.
This would denote a shift in the negotiations and power relations between different scales of government: the municipal-municipal interactions expected within the
metropolitan organization would likely witness a “power-over” scenario in which wealthier or more prominent cities would leverage their own interests in local priorities as regional priorities, in turn generating a metropolitan coalition capable of exerting power over the state authorities. This could generate an ideal scenario in which the metropolitan governance structure would function as a democratic scale for regional discussions amongst local leaders who, together, could communicate and negotiate with state authorities at a closer level of parity and with their interest aligned. In this sense, the metropolitan level would facilitate municipal-state coordination across municipalities that share areas and resources in order to streamline state-led initiatives. This is where regional leadership is key: in shifting toward this model, municipalities, the state, and other metropolitan areas all seek to reap benefits.
A Bumpy Road Ahead? Despite some progress toward the creation of instruments for regional collaboration and shared projects between different scales of government, efforts still fall short. Current federal legislation provides for instruments specifically designed to address and coordinate regional development across metropolitan areas. In this sense, municipalities within a given metropolitan area would have to self-organize around existing legislation if they are to reap the benefits of large-scale integrated planning. For current leadership within municipalities this implies four assumptions and challenges in advancing a framework for regional collaboration: -
Institutional consolidation of the metropolitan Area;
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Existence of local capacity within the municipalities administrations;
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Vision alignment;
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Shared projects with shared gains;
Each of these points bears implications for the successful operationalization of regional collaboration. In São Paulo’s case specifically, these might look like:
Institutional consolidation of the metropolitan area: There are currently eight metropolitan areas defined within the São Paulo Macrometropolis, yet only half are formally represented in the state as regional authorities This would be the very first step to advance regionalization practices in the region — creating capacity within each metropolitan area’s leadership to rally around and coordinate the regional issues at hand and propose solutions. Existence of local capacity within municipal administrations: It may very well be the case that many of these municipalities do not yet have the internal capacity to articulate larger scale negotiations and strategies. It would then become an issue to create such a capacity within the structure of local governance, relating strategic activities with regional influence carried out by the municipalities to a larger scale of governance, such as land use planning and transportation. Vision alignment: Even if such capacity exists within municipal administrations, they may not perceive the validity of adopting a regional approachNot only is local capacity necessary; ensuring that municipalities on board with the regional vision is even more essential. Shared projects with shared gains: The key word here is “shared.” The regional rail network offers promising opportunities for regional development and integration among municipalities, metropolitan areas at large, and the state. It is essential to advance partnerships and coalitions created in the regionalizing process to center their focus on actionable decisions and projects. If the institutions are created, local capacity is leveraged and visions are aligned, it is fundamental that there are projects to carry out continuously. As federal legislation requires consolidated metropolitan areas to deliver integrated development plans, these regions need projects, not just plans. Yet, these four points fall short of another issue that ought to be included within this framework: local participation within the political process. To an extent, the four points assume that existing civic capacity can be cohesively articulated through political leadership. This, I would be inclined to believe, is hardly the case. Still, these
issues speak not only to frameworks of regionalization as a new instance of governance at the metropolitan scale, but also as a milestone in the creation of a new culture — a new mindset. This new culture is one that transcends administrative boundaries and tries to identify the spatial limits of our problems and propose comprehensive solutions for them. This could, would, and should involve local civic capacity to begin engaging in issues that push local policy agendas beyond local policy, and initiate a discussion of the regional implications of local actions and the role of each locality in that process.
A Big Response While the state pushes to ensure the viability of the regional rail system alongside municipalities, the legacy of this process could be far larger. Leveraging local capacity to articulate at the metropolitan level could be the first of several initiatives that allow municipalities to coordinate themselves together with the state authorities around the development of regional projects and planning. This would signal a shift towards a more locally emancipated practice and development of public policies unbounded from municipal limits in order to articulate public policies, services, and projects of greater transformational impact. The TIC could represent a watershed moment in which multiple scales of governance join forces — dedicating local capacity toward regional thinking and collaboration, institutionalizing metropolitan agencies/committees, and developing a shared regional vision. Stepping away from a logic of small fixes to which the vast majority of municipalities are constrained this shift plays into a narrative of grand visions and would further the state’s capacity to provide assistance in the development of policies and services that resonate with local demands and address unique local challenges. Yet more, one could even hope to see real improvement in addressing problems that span across municipalities on a variety of issues — like transportation — through governmental responses that are not limited to fixing existing roads or hopelessly trying to expand urban road capacity (let’s recall the D owns-Thomson paradox).
This becomes more of an issue of local coordination with state support than the current practices of isolated solutions and a state power-over municipalities. As such, the challenge becomes an issue of mediation, a more effective mechanism through which municipalities can collectively address problem nomination, allocate accountability and responsibility, attempt to create a wider regional-thinking-community, and hopefully engage in civic participation every step of the way. Problem nomination would then become a practice in which different local governmental departments from several municipalities could point to common challenges, shared across adjacent territories, and draw resources and strategies that address them at the scales at which they exist. These efforts could be coordinated with the resources of each municipality, of the metropolitan region, and with the state in order to instate a long-term large- scale solution. Accountability and clarity of responsibility would be shared but hierarchically ranked according to the dimension of the problems perceived and the municipalities most affected by them. The expansion of resources and efforts from local to regional considerations would indicate a deliberate endeavor to create a regional sense of community. This would further consolidate the public support needed to advance such an agenda, and through mechanisms of civic participation and capacity building, it would be possible to expand access to policy debates and leadership throughout the region. Whether these considerations are to be heeded in the implementation of São Paulo’s regional rail system has yet to be determined. Nonetheless, given the legacy of existing legislation, the number of stakeholders involved, and the project’s collective and transformational potential, in aspiring to these goals of regional collaboration, we are certainly on the right track. Rafael Marengoni is an urbanist and a Master’s in Urban Design Candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design Harvard Kennedy School of Government May 2020, Cambridge, MA