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Obverse Colonization: SÃo Paulo, Global Urbanization And The Poetics Of The Latin American City

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569320601013806

1469-9575

Justin Read,

Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 An exact definition of the concept ‘global city’ will be provided in the discussion to follow. 2 Davidson, Robert A. ‘Spaces of Immigration’, 3. 3 Rama, The Lettered City. 4 Official statistics listed on the Prefeitura de São Paulo's Prefeitura de São Paulo. Available from http://ww1.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/portal/a_cidade/urbanismo/zona_leste/index.php?p = 372&more = 1&c = 1&tb = 1&pb = 1; INTERNET [Google Scholar] (City of São Paulo's) website. Available from http://ww1.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/portal/a_cidade/urbanismo/zona_leste/index.php?p = 372&more = 1&c = 1&tb = 1&pb = 1; INTERNET. 5 Whitaker Ferreira, ‘Globalização e urbanização subdesenvolvida’, 17. My translation. 6 Sassen Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, 2nd edn, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], The Global City, 357. 7 Sassen Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, 2nd edn, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], The Global City, 322. Emphasis added. 8 Resina, ‘The Concept of After-Image and the Scopic Apprehension of the City’, 22. 9 Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 406. 10 Cf. Wigley Wigley, Mark. 2001. Network fever. Grey Room, 4(Summer): 82–122. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], ‘Network Fever’, 82–122. 11 For a more comprehensive discussion of this ‘annihilation of space by time’, see David Harvey's Harvey, David. 1985. The Urbanization of Capital, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar] discussion of Marx's Grundrisse in The Urbanization of Capital. 12 Castells (2000 Castells, Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd edn, Malden, MA: Blackwell. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), op. cit., 436. 13 Castells, End of Millennium, 82. Emphasis in the original. Significantly for the purposes of the present essay, Castells cites illiteracy as the leading index of social exclusion. 14 Castells, End of Millennium, 82. Emphasis in the original. Significantly for the purposes of the present essay, Castells cites illiteracy as the leading index of social exclusion, 164. 15 Castells, End of Millennium, 82. Emphasis in the original. Significantly for the purposes of the present essay, Castells cites illiteracy as the leading index of social exclusion, 164–5. Emphasis added. 16 For a more complete account of the early history of the city, see Morse Morse, Richard. 1958. From Community to Metropolis, Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press. [Google Scholar], From Community to Metropolis. 17 United Nations Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis United Nations Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis. 1993. Population Growth and Policies in Mega = Cities: São Paulo, New York: United Nations. [Google Scholar], ‘Population Growth and Policies in Mega-Cities: São Paulo’, 3. 18 United Nations Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis United Nations Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis. 1993. Population Growth and Policies in Mega = Cities: São Paulo, New York: United Nations. [Google Scholar], ‘Population Growth and Policies in Mega-Cities: São Paulo’, 12. 19 Sevcenko, Orfeu extático na metrópole, 31. My translation. 20 I will refer to the satellite images in this essay, used by permission of Google Earth, as ‘after-images’ for several reasons. On the one hand, they are real-time images that give us an idea of what São Paulo actually looks like. On the other hand, they are virtual representations of reality obtained from an optical lens in space, beamed back to earth and digitized by a private corporation, accessed over the Internet on my home computer in Buffalo, and copied for use in this journal. In other words, we must always remind ourselves of the coincidence of reality and virtual-reality: the coincidence of the place, the image of the place, and the process by which that image has been produced. 21 By saying this, I am self-consciously trying to provoke. São Paulo is historical, of course, but this history appears to have been erased as a matter of place. In other words, it seems that most ‘historical’ buildings in São Paulo were built in the nineteenth century, which is hardly historical at all. And this is something that is entirely typical in many other places of the Americas, such as my home town of Los Angeles. 22 United Nations, op. cit., 9. 23 United Nations, op. cit., 16. 24 Gonzaga and Teixeira, ‘Asa branca’. 25 Cf. Lajolo and Zilberman Lajolo, Marisa and Zilberman, Regina. 1996. A formação da leitura no Brasil, São Paulo: Editora Ática. [Google Scholar], A formação da leitura no Brasil, 122–45. 26 This idea of Brazil as a ‘broadcast imagined community’ is reinforced by Bryan McCann's McCann, Bruce. 2004. Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] new history of radio and popular music, Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil. 27 Cf. Sevcenko's discussion of urbanization projects in Orfeu extático na metrópole, op. cit., 106–27.