Sao Paulo is the third largest city in the world, with a population of 24 million, and is forever growing (sprawl). Urbanisation has affected this city dramatically, causing various problems to the standard of living and housing, transport, and is causing more and more un-employment. Due to the extreme rate of natural growth, and migration to Sao Paulo, the city cannot develop at a fast enough rate, resulting in a lack of housing. Due to a high demand in housing, the house prices can be increased, meaning the poorer people are forced to build their own squatter settlements. Around about 8 million people in Sao Paulo live in these squatter settlements, whi8ch is about 30% of the population. These are usually situated in the outskirts of the city on un-used brownfield sites, that don’t belong to them (e.g. 25km out of Sao Paulo). The name given to these settlements in Sao Paulo is a ‘favela’, and they usually consist of any available materials, such as: corrugated metal, cardboard, wood, and sometimes brick. These favelas are often hazardous in various ways. One of which is that there is often a lack of safe drinking water, which means people are forced to drink water that could well carry disease (e.g. malaria). Most favelas do not have an electrical supply, and those that do have illegal electricity, that is pirated from another line (this can cause fire, or even death). Many favelas do not contain a toilet, and this means a built up of sewage, which can also carry disease. There is also the matter of overcrowding in favelas, which means poor living conditions, and the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis.
To try to improve these conditions there were various solutions carried out. Firstly, one idea is to improve the living conditions in the favelas, by a ‘self help scheme’. This means that the government supplies building materials, water, electricity, toilets etc. However this can have the knock on effect that people will be attracted to the newly developed favela, and this can increase the problems of urbanisation. In response to this people are encouraged not to move from rural areas to urban areas, so that the urban area can properly develop. This is done by replacing favelas with basic housing, and good facilities. Green belts have also been placed around Sao Paulo, in order to prevent sprawl.
Unemployment is another problem caused by urbanisation, and Sao Paulo is especially hit by this. Only 60% of people in Sao Paulo are literate, and therefore, cannot get into many areas of jobs, and this is what leads to the increase in unemployment. People living in favelas often established their own illegal businesses, whereby they didn’t pay any taxes.
Tourism is the main solution to the problem of unemployment. Lots of services are required to provide for the tourists, and therefore people are required to work in the services, that don’t necessarily need many qualifications. Jobs such as shoe shining are also used by the tourists, and this is a job type available to younger people. Other job types that are used by the tourists a lot are jobs such as taxi drivers.
Another affect of rapid urbanisation on an urban area is congestion problems, and Sao Paulo is heavily hit by this. Due to a rise in the proportion of people in Sao Paulo (urban area), there are subsequently more people driving a car, and also, more people using public transport. This means that there is often large traffic jams, and the average speed in the centre of Sao Paulo was once recorded at 4km/h. There is also a problem that comes with this, as due to the rise in traffic, people are waiting around a lot in their cars, giving off exhaust, meaning a lot of pollution is produced.
The traffic problem was set out, by the government, to be improved by building new roads, and widening current roads to fit more cars on them. Another method was to defer people from using personal materials, by methods such as increasing petrol prices, and parking prices. The government then tried to encourage people to use public transport, by building much better transport links etc. Making a balance of these two transport methods means that there is less congestion, as it is not all channelled into one method.
On the other hand there are a few good things that can come out of rapid urbanisation, such as facilities being built, schools, and transport etc. to accommodate for the rise in the proportion living in the urban areas.
