Quote:
Originally Posted by Purist
There is virtually no way to have a city the size of Sao Paulo and not have "favelas", or something equivalent. Most people in Europe and the US/Canada would have a hard time grasping the idea of 35-40 million people being in such close proximity to one another.
(Land planning is so tight in Japan that they have probably had to do a good job with Tokyo, but that's about the only example I can think of.)
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Space is not a problem in Brazil, pretty much the contrary, São Paulo is one of the largest horizontal urban areas of the world. There are more registered helicopters in Sao Paulo than any other city in the world.
To have "favelas" or shanty towns surrounding huge urban areas is a consequence of the fast growing development those countries are experiencing in the last decades. People from less developed regions flood the most developed regions of the country hoping to have access to the wealth of that place. This is common in every developing nation and is a major concern for the local governments. The idea of a highly contrast between poor and rich areas living together is indeed mostly shocking to europeans and north americans.