Rodriguez, Carolina; Lima Sakr, Fernanda; Griffiths, Sam; Hillier, Bill; (2012) The relationship of spatial configuration and socio-economic conditions in São Paulo, Brazil. In: Greene, M and Reyes, J and Castro, A, (eds.) Proceedings: Eighth International Space Syntax Symposium. (pp. 8079:1-8079:24). PUC: Santiago de Chile, Chile.

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Abstract

Brazilian cities have been the subject of a number of recent morphological and syntactical studies. The context is the recent socio‐economic development of Brazil which has led to a period of rapid urbanization. This process of urbanization raises the question of how the changing built form of Brazilian cities has affected the socio‐economic conditions and the livelihood of their inhabitants. This paper presents a case study of São Paulo, the largest city in South America and one of its most important financial centres. Since the 1950s the growth of the city has been characterized by a shift of the urban centre towards the southwest. This shift has had deleterious consequences on the historic centre, which has experienced both a deterioration of its built environment and an increase in socio‐economic deprivation. This paper examines how the transformed morphology of twenty‐first century São Paulo has affected the distribution of socio‐economic activity and demographic diversity of the city. The case study will examine the finding of Medeiros and Holanda (2007 and 2010) that urbanizing Brazilian cities are characterized in general by increased fragmentation of the urban fabric and will enquire as to the extent this is accompanied by social and economic differentiation. The research draws on a range of data including cartographic, official land use and demographic data and land use collected through field work. Space syntax segment analysis of São Paulo was performed in Depthmap. The information was then integrated into a GIS platform for socio‐spatial analysis. The analysis found that the morphology of São Paulo presents a particular case; neither a regular grid nor a deformed wheel but rather a ‘patchwork’ of offset grids which are morphologically differentiated by their scaled relationship to the larger urban structure. It is argued that the socio‐economic consequences of this fragmentation have been to increase the differentiation of social classes consistent with their accessibility to concentrations of activity taking place at different urban scales.

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