São Paulo reinterprets New York and Barcelona

Or “How cities are every time more similar between them”  

by Victor Pageo (Published in LA VANGUARDIA Digital on 02/05/11)

According to an article in page 2 in Metro São Paulo newspaper on last 6th april, including the front page as a present, New York and Barcelona will inspire a boulevard which will be placed in the area known as “crackolândia” (land of crack), whose name gives trails that rule out currently that area is taken up by an universitary campus or a technological center.

“Projeto da Nova Luz” is the name for that action that will revitalize that part in São Paulo’s downtown. An intervention, like every other of that kind, with numbers that remind a Wall Street session. Read:

R$1 billion of brazilian Reais (about 639M$) only for expropriations, distributed in R$700 millones (447M$) for store properties, R$290 millones (185M$) for residential and R$13 (8,3M$) for the adquisition of new pieces of land. If you add up the amounts in dollars you will see that it doesn’t coincides because of the rests, but don’t worry because it doesn’t matter too much now. It is not necessary you count it, because that numbers which are managed at the beginning of a process like this use to be like beer froath when you serve it:  first it has a mesure, then it wins thickness and finally most of times it ends by exceeding the rim of the mug.

That London 2012 would be the mirror to be reflected in was confirmed last year when, to carry out this vast urban regeneration, was elected the consortium formed by the companies CONCREMAT, CIA CITY, FGV and AECOM, because this last one, as it can be checked on its website, it also took the reins for the urban restructuring done in the area venue of the Olympic Park, at the northeast of the Londoner City, an industrial redoubt in the past. So Barcelona is not yet anymore the only exemple to follow concerning urbanistic questions, although its brand is still unharmed. And I say that “is not yet the only exemple” because I’m certain that Rio made, or it’s making, note of certains aspects of the catalan capital for it’s Olympic Games.

Picking up the amounts, and using an alcoholic comparison again, the drunkeness of numbers goes beyond, always according to Metro São Paulo, 600.000 square meters in expropriations and demolitions. On that area, that places up 45 blocks, is planned the construction of a boulevard inspired by Bryant Park in New York and Las Ramblas in Barcelona.

It is unknown if the final result will achieve that someone from New York or Barcelona “feel at home”, but that’s is very unlikely. Although nowadays is perfectly possible to reproduce any construction or existing space in any other location in the world (you only have to visit Las Vegas), there is something which at these days, still can’t be exportable nor reproducible: it soul. Fortunately.

And I say fortunately because in another way those constructions, those spaces, would lose all the sense of their existence, which is no other that to have printed the traces of their history. The traces of them and of all that’s around them, because buildings and spaces are what they are, and represent what they represent because they are placed there and not in any other places. Buildings are the negative of the picture, and it environment the positive. And viceversa.

At which point, all of this takes us to where I wanted to arrive, which is my personal perception that every time cities are more similar between them.

Zara, Fnac, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Calvin Klein, Boss,... are brands that we hardly find somebody who would sweare not to know, and that’s is because they take part of our urban landscape. We live with them and they go with us in our trips. There where you go, you can buy, you can eat, in short you can consume the same way as if you were in your city.  So travelling, if we foculise on this aspect, doesn’t guarantee new experiencies. We can disembark from an airplane on our airport of destiny and, going directly to town center, drop in a weekend buying in Zara, having lunch in McDonald’s, go again shopping in Marks Spencer, stop midafternoon to takee a coffee in Starbuck’s, later to have dinner in Burger King, sleeping in a Meliá Hotel and going back to the airport again we would take the airplane come back home almost without having noticed that we were in a different city in our last 24 hours.

Although this is, naturally, a poor simplification of a possible experience (I would never eat on two multinationals of hamburgers the same day), is not less certain that every time is more difficult when we travel that something wonders us for its innovation or differences with the place where we come from. At least referring to constructions and urban spaces built in the latest years. Nowadays, excepting certains intervention, are still two groups those which continue creating emotions:  the historical configuration of the urban spaces with its buildings (Vienna, Paris, Fez, Istanbul, Gent,...) and the natural environments (Iguazú, Paine Towers, Amazon, Sahara, Alps,...).

There will be who says that exist enough examples that prove that the simple construction of a building or monument has generated, and still is, lots of attraction by itself, and he won’t lack no reason:  Egyptian Pyramids, Eiffel Tower, Empire State, Sagrada Familia, Guggenheim Museum (New York and Bilbao),...

But this doesn’t avoid the fact that metropolis today they have certain tendency to the mimesis between them. Every time most cities have got that area riddled of offfice’s buildings full of businessmen on the workingdays that in the weekend become concrete deserts, offering images that any historical downtown would hardly like to be identified with. In London they call it Canary Wharf, in Paris La Défense, in São Paulo Berrini, in...  And in all of them we would also find placed the same multinationals companies, as into the shopping field we said before.

This is not an article to criticize the valid decision, comes where it comes from, of creating that boulevard in São Paulo taking ingredients from Bryant Park and Las Ramblas, given that actually it might be a motive of satisfaction that something one creates or owns was taken as inspiration.  It was only an excuse to share the conviction that globalization has entailed an uniformity between the metropolis around the world, what takes them away character and identity. With no doubt.