Minhocão views from below [Foto Eliana Rosa de Queiroz Barbosa]
Introduction
During the late 60’s and along the 70’s, a period of important economical and geographical growth in São Paulo, a decade in which the city’s number of inhabitants grew 56% , strategic planning was used for the first time in a cohesive way, to organize the city’s expansion.
One of São Paulo’s master plan was being discussed and a number of road interventions took place in order to control the chaotic congestions that started to appear, due to lack investments on public transport, increasing incentives for private transport – in order to promote the car industry, back then the main economic driving force of the region on the 50’s, 60’s and the 70’s - and an uncontrolled urban sprawl, causing an expansion of the urbanized area not predicted and never foreseen.
One of these interventions is the objective of this analysis. Commonly known as Minhocão , it is an elevated express way that passes thru the center, responsible for improving the car connection between the west and east part of the city.
It was part of a series of interventions at the center that did not aim to improve its urban space, only establish connections between the city´s different zones, using the central region as a crossing point, without any mechanism that could attract people or economical activities to the area. In this process, a fragmented and disjointed region was left behind, with very few private or public investments with the aim to enhance its urban environment.
Within this context, Minhocão is one of the most discussed interventions of the period. It is a 3,5 kilometres, 4 track express elevated avenue that crosses 3 central and highly ‘verticalized’ neighbourhoods of São Paulo. Constructed passing over existing avenues, in which high rise buildings were already placed without any retreat, it passes only 5 meters distant from some of the facades. Due to its size and profound impact on the urban landscape, it calls the attention of the public ever since its construction in 1970, during the military dictatorship.
Minhocão views from above [Foto Eliana Rosa de Queiroz Barbosa]
In its 40 years, several proposals were made in order to minimize its negative impact on the surrounding area, and since the 80’s, after Peter Hall has chosen it as one the “positive great planning disasters” , its demolition it has been discussed.
In 2006, the municipality and its urban development agency EMURB, announced a plan to bulldozer the elevated express way. A range of discussions took place, many of the main actors involved were listened to – except the population that lives on the surrounding area – and a competition was launched by the municipality to generate design proposals, in order to envision different solutions for the area.
The designers could propose anything, as long as the structure was not thrown apart or completely disassembled, neither the use as a car connection should be disregarded. The brief of the competition was questioned by the participants, the actors and the Brazilian Architects Institute (IAB), that ceased supporting it, causing many architects to cancel their application. Nevertheless the competition continued.
The final design proposal, through an extensive analysis of the region and the daily life of the surrounding neighbourhoods, took advantage of the ‘informal’ uses and people’s spontaneous social, economic and artistic appropriations of the site, making them the starting point of the design process.
This detailed and considerate look showed that Minhocão, apart from being a road, has another very important function. Since 1976 it is open only from Monday to Saturday, from 6h00 am to 10h00 pm, in order to minimize the noise effects on the adjacent buildings. This resolution, however, brought an unexpected use for this unpleasant urban infrastructure, that could not be disregarded. The lack of an adequate public space in these neighbourhoods triggers a surprising appropriation of its four tracks during the night and weekends. As soon as the tracks are closed for cars, they become available for the surrounding building’s residents.
Minhocão’s informal uses
Artistic Interventions: Both the spaces above and below the elevated are used by street artists, putting up temporary installations (as seeing in the two first images) and graffiti panels.
Artistic Interventions on Minhocão [Foto Eliana Rosa Queiroz Barbosa]
Economical activities: Street sellers often occupy the space on the weekends, taking advantage of the floating population. Bike rent and fix “shops”, foods and drinks tents, along with arts and crafts tends are the most common informal economical activities during the weekends.
Public events: A range of public events take place at the site. An open movie session, a path of a street race and a runway fashion show are some of the events that it hosted in the last few years.
Linear Park
Minhocao as a Linear Park [Foto Eliana Rosa Queiroz Barbosa]
Minhocao hosting Baixo Centro Festival
Foto Eliana Rosa Queiroz Barbosa
Minhocao hosting Vodoohoop party
Foto Eliana Rosa Queiroz Barbosa
Taking advantage of these informal uses, the proposal kept the elevated tracks and covered them. The space above was turned into a linear park open every day for the population. On the spots that Minhocão faces existing squares and open spaces, glass-made extensions were put, functioning as the entrances of the park (through lifts and stairs), as well as art galleries and popular shops for the users.
Final Design Proposal by Frentes Arquitetura - Sections:
Generic Section of the project, showing the tunnel with a gallery on one side.
Desenho do escritório [Frentes Arquitetura]
Along the 3,5km of the park the section adapts itself, according to its urban insertion, the height and occupation of the surrounding buildings.
The design also won the first prize of the 7ª International Architecture Bienal of São Paulo in 2007, and was shown in the 10th Venice Biennale of 2006.
Photomontage of the project
Montagem do escritório [Frentes Arquitetura]
Time passed by, the municipal administration changed – from a right wing party to a centre-left party – but maintained its neoliberal orientation. Now, the master plan is being revisited and some special areas are being stimulated, in order to organize the spatial development of the city, with the aim of increase density in the sectors and districts that already have urban infrastructure, generating new dwellings and job opportunities.
Part of this process, the brief for a new plan of redevelopment was launched on May of 2010, containing an adjacent neighbourhood of the elevated highway. The plan consists on creating a new road and a linear park along the existing rail line, as a way of increase its density and stimulate real estate development of the area. This way, once the new road system is finished, there will be no need for the elevated express way as a car connection between the west and east zones. Therefore the plan suggests to destroy it, at the estimated expense of R$80 million (approximately 35,5 million euros).
This paper intends to discuss, crossing the different interpretations of this place, if this demolition is really necessary as part of the new redevelopment plan and if all Minhocão’s functions (formal and informal) are being taken under consideration.
It is, in one hand, from a’ top down’ perspective, a terrible loss of value for the land and building owners and a damaging and replaceable urban infrastructure for the planners. Although, for others it has different meanings. From a ‘bottom up’ point of view, t can also be considered as an opportunity to some less wealthy inhabitants to live in a gifted area of the city and a social infrastructure for the inhabitants of its surroundings that, due to its appropriation, claim the space as their “place” .
A “non-place” (1) or generic space for some, a part of their “piece” (2) for others. These are the Minhocão’s multiple interpretations.
Top down: The owners and planners point of view
Minhocão is often seeing as a negative urban externality. Considered as a necessary infrastructure to avoid urban chaos when it was conceived, it immediately caused evasion of the middle class, until than predominant, of its surrounding blocks, due to its degrading factors (noise, pollution, visual barrier, among other). The process itself induced a downfall of rent prices, which eventually caused major property devaluation. Many of the buildings remained empty for some years, until the market value was balanced, at a point when many owners had put their properties “on sale”, allowing people from different social backgrounds to rent and buy apartments, beginning to live in the area.
Since its proximity to the center, to Paulista Avenue and to several wealthier – but saturated – neighbourhoods, the area still has the potential to become attracting again to the private investors, but Minhocão has always been ‘standing in the way’.
Now, with the real estate market acting frenetically all around the city, in some cases developing housing and office buildings in areas that are not as well provided with urban infrastructure as this, the site called again the attention of the planners.
The current master plan of the city was approved by the city council in 2002 and it specifies several areas to be improved and stimulated – redeveloped – by public and private investments, through the offer of differentiated parameters of construction.
Urban operations and New Urban Operation
Mapas elaborados por Eliana Rosa Queiroz Barbosa [EMURB]
These areas share a lot in common: they are relatively well located in within the city, are close to existent urban infrastructure and have a history of being occupied mainly by industrial facilities, an economic sector that is decreasing its importance inside the city since the 80’s, in a process similar to the European and North American experiences, but with a slower rhythm.
In a system of public auctions, an amount of extra squares meters are offered to real estate developers and land owners, in order to increase density and collect private money, applied latter in urban renewal and infrastructure enhancement and construction. It is supposed to be, according to the city planners, a virtuous cycle:
“(generates) more investments, increasing value, increased value attracts private investments, more private investments generates more resources and more public investments in that region of the city” .
Ten Urban Operations were established by the plan of 2002 and until today, only four were developed. Changes in the political administration, the lack of sufficient staff members in the urban development agency and secretary to develop new specific plans, the necessity of the approval by the city council of these specific plans and an economic crisis in 2002 – leading to a Real Estate crisis – are some of the reasons why none of the other Urban Operations got off the ground. Meanwhile, the real estate business - mainly on the housing and small offices sector – experienced an expansion cycle after 2006, due to some federal resolutions and economic policies, process that not even the 2008’s global economic crisis was able to break.
Many critics have being made to this planning system, mainly by academics – some planners, architects and urbanists - regarding its tendency of increasing social exclusion, the lack of public participation and the control of the urban redevelopment process by the private investors, along with the European-north American mainstream urban geography and sociology analyses that highlights that the renewal schemes in developing countries are, in practice, “undertaken for commercial reasons rather than for social-welfare objectives” (3).
In this panorama, a new area called Lapa-Brás was proposed, adding three existing Urban Operations, summing up around twelve linear kilometres. The main goals of the new operation are:
“achievement urban transformation, structural and social improvement, environmental enhancement, especially enhancing public spaces, arranging transport, deployment social housing programs and improvements in infrastructure and road system in a given area, the optimization of areas involved in urban interventions, divide and recycle areas considered underutilized, recovery and creation of environmental heritage, historical, architectural and cultural landscape, and stimulation of areas in order to generate jobs".
Perimeter of the new Urban Operation - Lapa Brás
Mapa elaborado por Eliana Rosa Queiroz Barbosa [Base do Google Earth]
The aims are very bold. If accepted by the city council, this will be the bigger urban intervention of the city’s history, especially considering the size of the project and its strategic position. Proposed to be the unification of several interventions and plans, its brief document contains the parameters of the studies to be hired, that eventually will put the plan together in order to be approved by city council.
The necessary studies for the new plan, according to the brief document, concern urban design, mobility infrastructure capacity, economic evaluation, environment studies and communication plans.
Public participation is not intended to be part of the process. Some public meetings, as a bureaucratic requirement, are planned at the end of each study, to show the results to the population, in a scheme of informative session, not participative construction.
Two major interventions are already determined: The necessity of changing the level of the rail line, allowing the north and south parts of the neighbourhoods to be reconnected and the demolition of the elevated highway – Minhocão – to be yet confirmed by traffic and mobility simulations studies.
The first resolution can easily be connected to the major aims listed above. These areas between the rail line and the river’s express way are disconnected from the urban fabric, suffering of an island effect, causing massive damages to the urban environment and landscape. The main functions existent are soft industrial uses and logistics facilities. Due to its proximity to the center and valued neighbourhoods, eliminating the border set by the rail line is an important step towards achieving a better use and occupation of the area, attracting more coherent functions as residential, commercial and service.
Aiming to become eventually, instead of an isolated “in between” zone, a sequence of the existing urban fabric. According to its main goal, it aims to:
“Overcome the barrier of the rail line and the redevelopment of its edge, presented as an important structural element to order the territory, covering improvements of mobility and accessibility, the restoration of the urban fabric, the continuity of the circulation system, the possibility of occupying empty or underutilized areas, the induction of the occupation of areas already urbanized with new standards based on the increase density of population and built areas, balancing the supply of housing and jobs, the increase of soil’s permeability, vegetation, and public spaces for socializing and leisure.
(…)
Starting from the complementary concepts of Landscape – set of natural and built elements that are seeing from a certain area of the territory) and Space ( the accumulated result of society’s actions – such as production, dwelling, leisure, or, summing up, the life that animates the objects that composes the landscape), the improvement of urban conditions and environmental quality may be understood as measures to diversify uses and functions, increasing built and demographical density consistently with the existent and planned infrastructure, increasing green areas an public spaces, improving drainage, adapting typologies, accessibility, mobility, properly converted in spatial terms and translated in urban form.”
Regarding Minhocão’s sector, the aims seam different from the main goals. The following sentences, withdrawn from the brief document, set the tone of what is intended by the project:
“[The removal aims] to promote the urban and landscape recovery of the areas close from the elevated avenue. (…)Recovering the urbanity of Amaral Gurgel avenue and Padre Olímpio da Silveira(…) Recovery of vast well located areas.”
“[The removal] should allow the sprawl of the Higienópolis’s qualities to this [Santa Cecília] region (…) shall provide the reinsertion of the blocks along its path. This re-qualification should be seeing on Vila Buarque and Barra Funda, besides it can, potentially, bring new features to public spaces of great meaning to the city, as República Square, Arouche, Santa Cecília and Marechal Deodoro Squares.”
Apart from mobility, there is no consideration about the other functions – mainly as a social infrastructure – of the elevated high way. There is also no explanation on how to propitiate the urban “recovery”, “reinsertion” and “requalification” desired neither the project of new areas that could possibly replace its social use.
The existent blocks are already connected, since the Minhocão does not interrupt mobility between its surroundings, as the rail line does.
View from Rosa e Silva Street
Foto Eliana Rosa Queiroz Barbosa
Two of the sentences listed above, however, begin to explain the intentions behind the removal. When the municipality’s plan mentions “sprawl Higienópolis qualities” and “new features to [existent] public spaces” it does not only implies its spatial characteristics, but also social and demographical. Higienópolis is one of the richest neighbourhoods in the city. Its typologies are not the same as the ones in its surrounding neighbourhoods. This innocent qualitative sprawl means, in practice, erasing and upgrading existent housing typologies, without creating conditions to keep the inhabitants in the region, a process similar to what already happened in other Urban Operation’s areas.
Different from the other underused areas that need “improvement of urban conditions and environmental quality” as the plan aims, the mentioned neighbourhoods and adjacent blocks of the elevated already presents “urbanity” enough.
What could be the problem? Which kind of “recovery”, “reinsertion” and “requalification” are really aimed?
The humanist approach on Urban Geography, according to (4), recognizes two different structures in which urban space occur: Physical and Cognitive. If so, the same urban space can be seen in different ways, according to its individual and personal meanings, its users life styles and different background. To be able to construct or - using the planning term - develop urban space it is necessary to recognize both realities of the city: “the city as a concrete construction (thing) and as an abstract representation (idea), and examine how each influences the form of the other”. (5)
The author distinguishes the significance of “space” and “place”, emphasizing the importance of the “construction of places” while restructuring contemporary cities, differentiating top down approaches as the ones that construct “generic spaces” and bottom down approaches when the attempt is to construct, develop, keep and transform “places”.
The Structuralist approach relates the production of space to the economic relations, rooted in Marxist thought and class antagonism. According to this stream an important distinction has to be made between “representations of space” or “conceived space” made by planners and designers and “spaces of representation” or “perceived spaces”, when they become appropriated by people, similar to the Humanist notion of “space” and “place”. Therefore, part of the inability of São Paulo’s planners to acknowledge the fact that Minhocão is a “perceived space” in the city originates on the fact that it was never a “conceived” social space.
Still through this stream, the different interpretations of city space rely on the antagonism of public and private space along with “city life”. From one side one can find, on the public realm, “public culture”, a space to socialize with others and where “shared citizenship is created”, and in the other the “fear of other”. According to Pacione, some contemporary urban groups (mainly middle and upper classes) don’t usually appreciate the “encounter with difference”, replacing open public spaces by closed and “sanitized” spaces, where “out of place” individuals can be excluded (6).
Architecture and planning are, according to structuralism, a product of dominant social groups. They reveal the power of these groups influencing the urban structure. In a way, the absence of recognition of Minhocão’s area vitality comes from the fact that it’s inhabited by those considered “out of place”, a different interpretation from its users.
The post-modernist approach however differs from this perception:
“The different urban landscapes are the result of this dialectic relationship between social practices and the physical. The same urban space can therefore have a different meaning for different social groups, a situation that can lead to conflict over the appropriate use of land (…) the urban landscape is the product of both culture and economy, and a proper understanding of urban environments must be based on explicit acknowledgments of this complexity” (7).
A point of view similar to the social science’s regime theory:
“regime theorists represent something of a synthesis of the two outlooks (Pluralist -liberals and Marxist-structuralists), control of capital outweighs other sources of power, but development process cannot be understood simply through examining a ‘logic’ of capitalism, since that logic is itself fabricated through human activity, including the resistance by other groups to capitalist aims.” (8).
According to these two streams, in order to understand the urban environment in the proposed Lapa-Brás diagnosis and contradicting its traditional top down planning approach, it is necessary, as much as the economic study, a broader social study, identifying – not assuming – the region’s inhabitants needs, their “perceived spaces” and the existent urban spaces’ meanings and potentialities, in order to include them in the master plan and projects.
Not exactly an easy task for a neo-liberal oriented Urban Development Secretary. The discussion of “urbanity” – as the plan refers – or “liveability” – the equivalent urban geography term – should be employed in both objective and subjective evaluations: “the city on the ground and the city on the mind” (9). This accomplishment São Paulo’s city planners are apparently still far from achieve.
Bottom up: Urban infrastructure appropriation and the making of urban Piece and Place
“The one actor in the urban development process not yet considered is, in some settings, the most influential” (10)
Elevado 3.5 is a documentary wrote and directed by the architects João Sodré and Paulo Pastorelo; and the politic scientist Maíra Bühler, first prize winner of “É tudo verdade” Film Festival of 2007.
Alternating a sequence of images and scenes of Minhocão and its surroundings; with personal testimonials of twenty characters, inhabitants of its adjacent buildings, from different ages, social and demographical backgrounds and living in different positions in relation to the elevated high way: first floor, middle floors and last floors of the buildings, but all with something in common: a window or a terrace door facing the Elevado.
The delicate film reveals the complexity of the area’s figures, but also several different typologies, building densities and possible urban relations and interpretations. To each of them, the elevated high way has a different meaning, with multiple relations between their urban space and “place”. The words “pride”, “life”, “need”, “leisure”, “place”, “home”, “memory”, “happiness”, “sadness”, “dream”, among others permeate their imaginary, in contrast with the asperity of “recovery”, “reinsertion” and “requalification”, the planning terms mentioned.
When asked about what the window (or terrace door) facing the elevated high way means to them, many related the view with positive sensations. About the demolition, none of the characters that addressed the subject were in favour.
The close relation of the surrounding inhabitants with Minhocão as their “piece” and “place”, along with the appropriation of it by, not only them, but by all the surrounding neighbourhoods residents, and – through the popular events, street art manifestations and happenings – by the whole city, raises an inevitable question: demolition for whom?
Conclusion
“The struggle over collective urban spaces and the representation of differences in them are indispensable elements for the advancement and spatialization of democracy. They introduce new political subjects and new rules into cultural and social life, and create possibilities for widening the exercise of citizenship, from the abstract realm of nation-state to the concrete realm of urban spaces” (11)
Minhocao and its users
Foto Eliana Rosa Queiroz Barbosa
The present paper, through alternating São Paulo’s current planning statements and resolutions towards urban redevelopment, with different theoretical approaches on Urban Studies (Urban Anthropology, Geography and Sociology) and a record of its inhabitants’ testimonials, discuss the “top down” character of planning policies historically applied in the city and, in spite of it, the creativity of its population concerning urban informal and unexpected appropriation.
By architects, urbanists and planners Minhocão is, by consensus, an urban aberration. Product of an authoritarian act that “privileged the circulation of cars over pedestrians, and efficiency over socialization” , its construction by no means could be considered a good solution for the area.
But the city embraces the good and the bad planning practices. It forgives drastic design proposals and overbearing approaches; it adapts, copes with it and eventually accepts it as its own piece. People transform and appropriate urban space in unexpected ways that, in urban renovation processes, cannot be disregarded.
As a final revenge, what was a negative externality for some – the formal actors, land and building owners – became a positive externality for many – accidental figures that, because of Minhocão’s existence, have the meanings to live in one of the most well served areas of the city in terms of job offer, public transport, educational and health facilities, overcoming decades of territorial exclusion and “peripherization”. A spontaneous demographical process caused by economic dynamics, that the new plan itself intends to induce: the increase of inhabitants in the central area.
“While many cities and citizens are linked into an electronic ‘non-place urban realm’, place – based relational networks that rely on propinquity and physical interaction – the key characteristics of urban places – remain central to the experience of human social, economic and cultural life” (12).
notes
1
AUGE, Marc. NON-PLACES: Introduction to an anthropology of Supermodernity. New York: Verso,1995.
2
MAGNANI, José Guilherme; TORRES, Lillian de Lucca (org.). Na metrópole: textos de antropologia urbana. São Paulo: EDUSP/FAPESP, 1996.
3
PACIONE, Michael. Urban Geography – a global perspective. New York: Routledge, 2001, p.539.
4
PACIONE, Michael. Op. Cit.
5
PACIONE, Michael. Op. Cit., p. 22.
6
PACIONE, Michael. Op. Cit.
7
PACIONE, Michael. Op. Cit., p.162.
8
FAINSTEIN, Susan S. The city builders – Property, Politics and Planning in London and New York. New York: Blackwell Publishers,1994, p. 264.
9
PACIONE, Michael. Op. Cit., p 397.
10
PACIONE, Michael. Op. Cit., p.161.
11
PALLAMIN, Vera M.; LIMA, R. Zeuter. Reinventing the void: São Paulo’s Museum of art and public life along Avenida Paulista. Pg 59-83. IRAZABAL, Clara (ed.). Ordinary Places Extraordinary Events. New York: Routledge, 2007.
12
PACIONE, Michael. Op. Cit., p.24.
bibliographical references
ARTIGAS, Rosa; MELLO, Joana; CASTRO, Ana Claudia (Org). Caminhos do elevado. memória e projetos. São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial, 2007.
FELDMAN, Sarah. Aprendendo com o Elevado Presidente Costa e Silva, o Minhocão. Resenhas Online, São Paulo, 08.091, Vitruvius, jul 2009. <http://www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/resenhasonline/08.091/3029>.
FERREIRA, João Sette Whitaker. O mito da cidade global. PHD Thesys. São Paulo: FAUSP, 2003.
HALL, Peter. Great Planning Disasters. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
SALES, Pedro M. R. Operações Urbanas em São Paulo: crítica, plano e projetos. Arquitextos, São Paulo, 08.091, Vitruvius, abr 2005 <http://www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/arquitextos/05.059/476 >
SOMEKH, Nadia. A cidade vertical e o urbanismo modernizador – São Paulo 1920-1939.São Paulo: FAPESP; Studio Nobel, 1997.
SOMEKH, Nadia; CAMPOS NETO, Candido Malta. Desenvolvimento local e projetos urbanos. Arquitextos, São Paulo, 05.059, Vitruvius, apr 2005 <http://www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/arquitextos/05.059/470>.
TAKAHIRO Miyao, YOSHITSUGU Kanemoto. Urban dynamics and urban externalities. New York: Routledge, 2002.
VERHOEF, Erik T.;NIJKAMP, Peter. Externalities in Urban Economy. Available at http://www.tinbergen.nl/discussionpapers/03078.pdf .
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/new-high-line-designs-are-unveiled/#more-3221
http://ecohabitararquitetura.com.br/blog/tag/elevado-costa-e-silva/
http://ideas.repec.org/p/dgr/uvatin/20030078.html
http://ww2.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/secretarias/desenvolvimentourbano/mapa/09_operacoes_urbanas.jpg
http://www.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~kanemoto/UrbanExt.html
http://www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/portal/a_cidade/noticias/index.php?p=37330
http://www.promenade-plantee.org/
http://www.revistaau.com.br/arquitetura-urbanismo/156/artigo44390-4.asp
http://www.tinbergen.nl/discussionpapers/03078.pdf
about the autor
Eliana Barbosa is an Architect and Urbanist, Master in Modern and Urbanism Contemporary Urbanism and Master in Human Settlements. Professor at the Architecture and Urbanism Department, Universidade Nove de Julho, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
