Reinventing a Megacity: São Paulo Diagonal Sul strategic proposal

Carlos Leite, Bernd Rieger and Eduardo della Manna devised a strategic masterplan, for a major Brownfield redevelopment in São Paulo. The plan deploys the potential of high quality urban design to function on a granular level. Social inclusion, public participation and integrated mobility are the core of this vision for reinventing a megacity. What follows is a full, unedited version of their project realized for the Urban Age and LSE South America Conference last year.

Published courtesy Carlos Leite

City: Design/Desire

São Paulo Megacity: capital of design [desire]?

São Paulo Megacity: a question of desire [design]?

Cities cover less than one per cent of the earth’s surface but…

Picture by BBC Brasil

> around 50 per cent of the world’s population live in cities
> consume some 75 per cent of the world’s energy
> are responsible for 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions
(by c40 cities-climate leadership group-clinton)

Pictures by BBC Brasil

 ✪WHY TO ACT
• the population of the central district has declined steadily since the 1970s. despite ambitious revitalisation plans, wealthy residents and businesses still move out. the population is growing most in peripheral areas with the poorest infrastructure.
• thesis: the reuse of central city urban voids instead of peripherical sprawling. compact city = sustainable city
✪WHAT TO DO:
• To operate on the wastelands and to use the potentiality of the urban voids
• The existing infrastructure should support the development of the new metropolitan territory
• The fragments of the territory could articulate a New “city-inside-the-city”
• Contemporary urban projects should operate with dynamics, flexibility and strategies: a dynamic urbanism
• The challenge of contemporary architecture is to work on the existing city, instead of its substitution/negation: to restore the existing city

✪HOW TO DO IT:
• Create a local development agency
• Private-public partnership which allows the continuity of a project for the urban revitalization of an obsolete, abandoned industrial neighborhood along the diagonal sul 

The Idea: the territorial descontinuities of diagonal sul offer a new urban project opportunity to develop a metropolitan territory, a compact city inside the city, a sustainable neighborhood within

✪ WELL-BALANCED INTEGRATED URBAN DIMENSIONS:
This new city model could be developed focusing the best delivery mechanisms to create high quality urban environments. The new territory is a unique opportunity to pioneering to develop a strategy of urban intervention which contemplates both and well balanced the spatial/design aspects of the question as well as the process/delivery mechanisms of an urban project.

✪ URBAN COMPACTNESS:
It implies intensification, high density and mixed uses as opposed to low density, mono use urban sprawling process. The compact city development model has a potential for achieving more sustainability. High densities are much welcome.

✪ INFRASTRUCTURAL REDEVELOPMENT:
The reuse of existing infrastructure is more sustainable than the creation of new areas. Encouraging smaller displacements, decreasing necessity for mobility and prioritizing the use of public and collective transport systems is also essential is this new city model inside the metropolitan old industrial territories.

✪ SOCIO-SPATIAL DIVERSITY:
Specific mechanisms of tax incentives could be designed to arrest the decline in physical fabric in old industrial urban areas, encouraging new developments and including the combination of a wide mix of land use, in balance with its surroundings.

✪ A CITY INSIDE THE CITY:
☀ Create new quality in public spaces
☀ Propose joint ventures between public power and the private sector to stimulate the cleaning of contaminated areas
☀ Promote public equipments of symbolic significance to the region and of intense social use
☀ Enhance public investments (municipal, state and federal)
☀ Attract and articulate public, private and institutional investments
☀ Ensure integrated sustainability of all actions

The Diagonal Sul Challenge
☀ The discussion: private initiative – the city – academic community
☀ suit long term urban planning
☀ incentive private investments
☀ sustainable communities, quality of live
☀ optimize use of existing infrastructure, eliminate polluti
☀ generate wealth, increase tax revenues for the city

The Result
☀ No ghettos social inclusion
☀ mixed use all close by
☀ public transport
☀ quality of life
☀ low/carbon high energy efficiency

The operation I Diagonal Sul Challenge
The negotiation proposal: The tools
urban interventions in the City of São Paulo follow the “plano diretor estratégico 2002 – 2012 “ . This law is integrating alternative tools to implement “operações urbanas”. Specific laws are created for each “operação urbana”. Operational procedures and conditions can thus be defined according to each specific requirement.

The federal law “Estatuto da Cidade (No 10.257, 10th of July 2001)” is providing directives and tools for the proposed urban intervention. The most essential tool is the “concessão urbanistica”. Here, the city can delegate the activities necessary to approve and execute the urban intervention to private initiative.

The Proposal
Discussion and negotiation with the City and the academic sector will integrate with the metropolitan planning line up, with present and future mobility requirements to reduce carbon emissions, eliminate pollution, offer social inclusion, create local economic growth potential (more jobs), and provide public services, culture and entertainment

The Operation I Tools
Mechanisms to proceed with success - City gains
The potentially successful mechanism: using realistic and technically sound information following the existing legislation, choose well succeeded examples. Involve the world best urban design professionals for high level negotiations to allow for fast decisions and enthusiasm for transforming an area without life into an exciting city

The most helpful support the City can give to deliver Diagonal Sul:
Reduce bureaucracy
Take quick decisions

The City´s gains:
additional yearly tax revenue from IPTU (property tax) R$ 75m p.a., new jobs and new population (I.R. and others) R$ 120m p.a., ISS (service tax) R$ 140m p.a., increasing productivity of transferred industry R$ 75m p.a. R$ 410m p.a., tax revenue during construction time R$ 150m, sales of CEPAC´s (munic.certif. to increase constr.area) R$ 500m

The Operation I Mechanisms
Urban Operations Network

Mobility Network
 
São Paulo metropolitan
2020 scenario(pitu2020)
Metro (Dark Blue), Rail (Light Blue), BRT (Red), Monorail (Green/Yellow)

DIAGONAL SUL
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

General Strategy | Approaching

Urban Diagrams | Project implementation strategy

 

Strategic Masterplan | structural diagrams

✪ Well-balanced integrated urban dimensions
✪ spatial containment / urban compactness
✪ infrastructural redevelopment
✪ socio-spatial diversity
✪ a city inside the city

Strategic masterplan general implantation

Strategic masterplan | Program + areas

Strategic masterplan implantation I city context

Strategic masterplan implantation overview I Infrastructural axis and linear

Strategic masterplan implantation overview I Infrastructural axis Ground level

São Paulo: a megacity urging to be reinvented

The Metropolis of São Paulo I Paraisopolis Favela And Morumbi Walled Condos Source: Lalo De Almeida