CRACK CITY, SAMBODIA: The photoreal present and the virtual reality future. A notable feature of the future is that the landscape is haunted only by vague human figures, if at all ... a feature characteristic of A. Hitler's landscape paintings as well, as art historians have often noted. Source: G1.com.br. Click to zoom.
Local merchant Maria do Socorro Ferreira, 41 … laments what happened to business owners who had their buildings expropriated and lost their businesses. That is what happened to the owner of a parking lot that Maria used, on Rua do Triunfo. “The guy spent R$400,000 renovating it”, she said.
Prefeitura quer que iniciativa privada toque projeto da Nova Luz: City government wants private enterprise to execute New Light urban renewal project, report G1/Globo.
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The city plans to expropriate 106 acres in the downtown area.
Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, New York, for comparison’s sake, involved some 21 acres, and years and years of intense negotiation with the local community.
The local community in this case is simply being demonized in the media — Globo is a major culprit — as an homogenous army of crack-smoking zombies and evicted at gunpoint by the fabled Tropa de Choque.
Typical of Globo journalism, some 95% of the report consists factoids plagiarized from press releases by the city government, and dedicates only a token amount of space to opposition to the project by local residents whose properties are being sold off for pennies, in offers they cannot refuse, so that Microsoft can have a nice place to work out of for very, very cheap.
It cannot even manage to interview a single person so affected. It interviews one person who knows of, and sympathizes with, a person so affected.
Symptomatic: G1 follows the city government — the incumbent mayor is polling at about 9% in his bid for reelection, trailing even Paulo Maluf — in referring to the neighborhood as “Crackland.”
The area actually has a historically consecrated name of its own — it is part of the Santa Ifigênia neighborhood, I think. But G1 does not bother to refer to it. It is if the New York Times made a regular practice of referring to the GOP presidential candidate as John “The Insane” McCain.
Longtime residents and property owners are now seeing themselves socioeconomically cleansed from the area along with the crackheads.
Not a day goes by without a “news” program like Bandeirante’s Alerta Brasil showing little kids smoking crack on the sidewalks in the neighborhood while waxing apocalyptic about the moral degradation of the city in comparison with a mythical utopian past.
Pure fascistoid moral panic campaign. Compare
Notice the complete absence of crime statistics from this report, as an indicator of the dimension of the problem and a measure of progress or the lack thereof.
São Paulo crime statistics being what they are, in any event. See
- São Paulo: “Criminal Statistics Off By 13,000 in ABC”
- “Deconstructing Alckmin”: Books Cooked on São Paulo Bank Robberies
- “Resistance Followed By Death”: Truths, Partial Truths and Statistics
I translate, draft-quality as always.
The municipal government of São Paulo wants private enterprise to assume responsibility for expropriations of property in the former Cracolândia neighborhood, which the city administration has renamed Nova Luz (”new light”), in downtown São Paulo. The government is set to send the municipal legislature a bill by the end of August that creates an urban planning concession for the area.
“The former Crack City”: As if the city government had wished the problem away in the act of renaming the area.
As you read later on, the crackhead zombie armies still apparently rule the dark of night in New Light.
Private companies need this authorizing legislation in order to expropriate 269,300 square meters, which will be rezoned as a public use area. The 23 square block area is bounded by Av. Rio Branco, Av. Duque de Caxias, Av. Mauá, Av. Cásper Líbero, the Alfredo Issa Square and Av. Ipiranga. The municipal legislature has already received a bill designed to increase the area by another 150,000 square meters.
An urban planning concession model has never been used before in São Paulo, but it is a measure provided for in the city charter and master plan, according to Valéria Rossi of the Secretary of Subprefectures, who is coordinating the Nova Luz project.
If the bill is approved, the city administration will announce a public bidding process that will select one or more private firms. These firms will be responsible for expropriations of properties and for selling the expropriated properties to other companies interested in investing in the area.
The winner of the contract will have to offer guarantees demanded by the city government. According to Rossi, the idea is for the contractor to restore decayed properties in the area and realize the renovation of public spaces, improving sidewalks, pavement, and lighting, and planting new trees, among other tasks to be specified in the contract solicitation. “Doing it through a concession is a way of making sure the area is revitalized in the quickest and most orderly fasion possible,” Valéria argued.
Photo caption: Demolition of properties in the area began in 2007. The city expropriated 57 properties to construction public buildings (Foto: Luisa Brito/G1)
The city has already expropriated 57 properties in the area in order to construct public buildings, such as Prodam )the municipal IT and Communications Company) and another city agency. The Metropolitan Guard was the first agency to install itself in the area, on Couto de Magalhães St., on 11 August.
Anoither four blocks have been expropriated and another two in the process of being expropriated. The area will be donated to the CDHU, the state housing and urban planning company, for the constuction of housing. CDHU says it is waiting for the donation before drawing up plans for the housing units to be built in the area.
The New Light Project
Project New LIght began in 2005, when the area was declared an area of public interest. The city government established a policy of tax incentives and other measures designed to revitalize the neighborhood, one of the most degraded in the downtown area, by attracting companies and residents to the area.
Those who moved to and invested in the area get tax breaks such as a 50% discount on the IPTU property tax and a 60% dedution on the ISS service tax for five years. Companies can also obtain a refund of up to 80% of the amount invested in the form of tax credits with the city government or public transportation passes for employees.
Although the plan dates to 2005, it only got off the drawing board in 2007, with the first call for companies to set up shop in the area. According to the city government, 23 companies have been cleared to move into the area so far. Of these, 12 are systems companies [sic], three are call centers, one is an advertising agency, one cultural, another is print shop, and five are real estate investors. According to Rossi, these companies are expected to build or renovate 154,000 square meters, invest R$752 million in the area and generate nearly 26,000 jobs. Two of them are operating in the area so far.
One of the 23 is Microsoft, which is scheduled to complete its installations and start operating in the area in 2010. Sought for comment by G1, Microsoft said, in a written response, that details of the project will be defined in the next few months.
Little has changed
Business owners who have been in the area the longest complain that little has changed since hte project was announced. According to them, the number of crack consumers has diministed, but some still frighten away customers, and at night, groups of them still take over the streets. “At night, you have to pass through here running”, comments assistant technician Robson Luciano de Almeida, 29 , who works in an audio equipmment shop on Rua Aurora.
PHOTO CAPTION: Maria do Socorro thinks security has improved, but criticizes expropriations (Photo: Luísa Brito/G1)
The security problem is also cited by Fábio de Azevedo, 38, partner in a computer products store In his view, the project ought to include improving street cleaning, rebuilding sidewalks, and renovating rundown buildings. He sees the growth in the number of malls containing several stores as a new trend in the area. “This has become a fever here, because it brings the building owner more profits to divide the building among several tenants than renting to just one”, said Fabio, who moved to the area because he thought it was a good point of sale
Local merchant Maria do Socorro Ferreira, 41, believes the area has improved a lot as far as the crack problem and cleanliness go, and that the volume of customers is increasing. But she laments what happened to business owners who had their buildings expropriated and lost their businesses. That is what happened to the owner of a parking lot that Maria used, on Rua do Triunfo. “The guy spent R$400,000 renovating it”, she said.
It really is outrageous: The city failed to provide adequate security to the area to prevent it from turning into Crackland in the first place — to say the least, because people on the public payroll (like, say, cops) generally get paid off to put the fix in for this sort of thing, you know — and now the people who paid taxes for the service not delivered are losing their capital investments into the bargain.
I know that if the City of New York expropriated our Brooklyn flat for pennies on the dollar of its fair market value, in order to put up a Wal-Mart or something (let us suppose into the bargain that the mayor was a major shareholder in Wal-Mart as well), I would not consider that to be the act of a “pro-business” administration. Would you?
Decorative mosaic, Conjunto Nacional (1958) office block and shopping mall, Avenida Paulista at R. Consolação, São Paulo, Brazil.
Filed under: Brazil, Journalism, Media, Politics | Tagged: expropriation, são paulo, urban planning, urban renewal
