Abstract
Since the 1950s, the majority of Latino-American cities have experienced a demographical growth and a major extension of their urban area. Some writers had even talked about the “monstrous cities”. In about half a century, from 1950s to 1990s, the demography of the cities boomed from 13 million inhabitants to 60 million. Following the recession of the 1980s, the city, that was the polarized center of all the economical activity of the country, suffered from the effect of the financial crises, and the repercussions affected mostly the vulnerable population. They also led to aggravation of housing problems. Soon after, the housing logics of Latin American cities distinguished itself from the logic followed by other world cities by social spatial segregation.
In fact, with the onset of globalization, urban segregation became a recurrent issue in Latin American literature, and more generally, in international publications. The picture of favela standing at the feet of luxury buildings has become an iconic view of Latin American's cities for the rest of the world, and this kind of pictures such as the one represented in picture 1, commonly symbolizes those cities in scholar manuals of geography as well.
Sao Paulo, as many other cities predominantly in Brazil and Mexico, is a good illustration of the topic. Ever since its establishment in the 16th century, Sao Paulo experienced major transformations, notably with the development of the coffee industry, and is now involved as the main business hub in Latin America. Despite all of these successes, urban development has raced ahead of urban planning and the city has turned into a highly segregated place in spatial terms, with a radial-concentric urban structure, rich population concentrated in the center and poor located in peripheral areas.
We may therefore wonder why this world city still faces the same problems of inequality as other developing cities. Based on three main articles and many social and urban indicators, we will initially define segregation in Sao Paulo in order to assess and analyze it. Then, we will focus on the main socio-economic problems that might explain segregations, and compare different literature on the subject. Finally, we will examine its evolution, the consequences of the lack of urban and social policies before discussing a few solutions.
Segregation should be understood as the gathering of a particular group in a given area – race, ethnicity, income. Brazilian urban sociology originally mistook the theme of segregation for the concepts of poverty, inequality and the lack of access to the basic public services. Residential segregation is therefore not a major theme in the Brazilian social debate, nor is it used as a basis for public policies.
First of all, this misunderstanding in comparing poverty and segregation can be explained by a certain evolution of both concepts.
