Perspectives in Metropolitan Research 5: New Urban Professions – A Journey through Practice and Theory

“People are searching for treasures in the trash, but nobody cares
about the river. Once in a while somebody from the district hall
comes and removes the trash.” (Pauses.) “Or the rain does it and
brings other and more. We have frequent floods here.”
(He pulls out his cell phone. A video shows a turbulent and raging
torrent of water, carrying away bottles, half trees, tires, plastic bags,
and all sorts of absurd things. It’s difficult to see. It’s too fast. And
the sun is reflecting on the cell phone.)
“This was two weeks ago. The water level was this high.” (Resident
One points at dirty traces on the his garage wall—more than
two meters above the water level.) “It completely covered the
tubes over there.” (He now points at the immense round tubes
that channel the water under the crossing train tracks.)
(Resident TWO, the boy with the knife, intervenes.) “It carries away
everything. Even houses.”
(Again Resident ONE) “Yes, but you see them only in pieces.”
(And yet another resident.) “Yes, sometimes even pieces of dead
bodies, human bodies.”
(The floods seem to be a passionate and blustery discussed issue.)
(Resident ONE) “I thought of getting in contact with Greenpeace,
but I gave up.”
(A pause of silence gives the sentence a dramatic aura. Then a voice
from offstage emerges.) “The aim of the São Paulo Strategic
Master Plan is to create bus corridors to induce the creation of
housing and jobs in areas easy to access by public transportation.
In reality though, a lot of these planned mobility axes
coincide with the creeks—parallel and occasionally intersecting—with
the problem that most of them are subject to regular
flooding and at the same time are occupied by informal settlements.”
(While the voice from offstage is philosophizing, the spotlight
moves to a group of actors on the right side of the stage who have
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Perspectives in Metropolitan Research