Recorded February 4, 2004
Below is the original description of the event.
São Paulo, Brazil’s most important city and a global metropolis, is celebrating its 450th birthday. The São Paulo of today, a metropolitan area of more than 17 million, has come a long way since 1880 when it was a small town of 60,000. A true new-world city, with its mobile society and migrant culture, São Paulo is a thriving, cosmopolitan city with many dramatic problems to face, from the unfair distribution of income to high unemployment rates, from its public transport challenges to the drainage of its hilly urban site. The recently approved Strategic Master Plan and its new zoning regulations are a pragmatic answer to many of these problems. However, the Plan’s innovations caused contentious local debate and were not easily approved, because, as J.J. Rousseau said in the 18th century, “the public interest is not the same as the interest of everybody.”
Jorge Wilheim is a well-known architect who recently commemorated 50 years of professional practice. He is currently responsible for the Municipal Urban Planning Department of São Paulo, in the Workers Party local government and also holds the Rio Branco Chair in Brazilian Studies at UC Berkeley for Spring Semester 2004. The former Deputy Secretary-General of Habitat II, Jorge Wilheim has also been the country’s Secretary of State for Planning and for the Environment. His books include Fax: Messages from a near future and Projeto São Paulo.