{"id":144654,"date":"2014-02-13T18:05:08","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T20:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=144654"},"modified":"2017-03-10T12:57:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T15:57:51","slug":"concrete-walls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/concrete-walls\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Concrete Walls"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This

GUILHERME GAENSLY \/ IMS<\/span>This was the Tiet\u00ea and the yacht club in S\u00e3o Paulo in 1915.GUILHERME GAENSLY \/ IMS<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Every year at this time, when the rains are heavier and more frequent, the rivers and creeks of the city of S\u00e3o Paulo become visible and we are reminded of them when they thrust out to the streets the excess water they can no longer carry. Rivers are simply responding to the way in which they have been molded over many decades. \u201cPeople say that a river that washes everything away is violent, but no one says the banks that compress them are violent,\u201d wrote German playwright Berthold Brecht. Most of the rivers that crisscross Brazil\u2019s biggest city have been compressed and hidden in concrete tunnels under broad avenues. Some of them have had their courses redrawn\u2014\u201ccorrected,\u201d as engineers would say\u2014and can no longer be thought of as an alternative opportunity for a pleasant weekend outing.<\/p>\n

The transformation of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s rivers was an intense and rapid process. At the beginning of the 20th century, the city\u2019s residents amused themselves on Sundays by swimming, fishing, or boating on the Tiet\u00ea River, along whose banks were clubs, restaurants, and picnic grounds. Those pleasures ended with the increase in the amount of waste discharged by homes and businesses into the river. By the 1950s it was already, as it is today, an open sewer, revealing a careless attitude toward nature and indifference to the esthetics of Brazil\u2019s wealthiest city. Since 1995, the effort to clean up the Tiet\u00ea, the main river that crosses the city, has consumed the equivalent of $1.6 billion and reduced the extent of the pollution, which had been evident as far away as Barra Bonita, 260 km from the capital. Now the pollution goes only as far as Salto, 100 km away, but it has not stopped. In April 2013, the governor of S\u00e3o Paulo announced the third phase of the Tiet\u00ea River cleanup program, which calls for $2 billion in investments. If all goes well, the percentage of sewage collected will increase from 84% to 87%, and the percentage treated from 70% to 84%, both in 2016. Another R$439 million was spent from 2007 to 2013 to clean up 137 of the 300 creeks in the metropolitan area. It is estimated that 7 kg of wastes are discharged every second into the rivers and creeks of Greater S\u00e3o Paulo, which people still see as a convenient place to dispose of not only residential and industrial wastes, but construction debris, plastic bottles, sofas, tires, and old cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cS\u00e3o Paulo has suffocated its rivers,\u201d is the way that engineer and attorney Rodolfo Costa e Silva sums up the situation. He is coordinator of the programs to clean up the Tiet\u00ea and improve the ring roads around the Tiet\u00ea and Pinheiros rivers. \u201cWe want to clean up the rivers and keep them clean,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s both a water-related and urban development process.\u201d The programs he coordinates have recruited the participation by municipalities in Greater S\u00e3o Paulo, companies and NGOs. Plans call for building bike paths, sidewalks and parks along the 50 km of highways and navigation routes on the rivers, and would go so far as connecting the Congonhas and Guarulhos airports by boat.<\/p>\n

\"A

Eletropaulo collection<\/span>A photo of Avenida Leopoldina, the banks of the Pinheiros River, in S\u00e3o Paulo during the February 1929 flood.Eletropaulo collection<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The city of S\u00e3o Paulo, with its mistreated rivers, \u201cis an example of what can happen when the decision-making authority is concentrated in the hands of just a few powerful groups,\u201d says historian Luis Ferla, a professor at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Unifesp). A native of Curitiba who has lived in S\u00e3o Paulo since 1992, Ferla was one of the curators of an exhibit entitled O tempo e as \u00e1guas: formas de representar os rios de S\u00e3o Paulo (Time and the Waters: Ways of Depicting the Rivers of S\u00e3o Paulo). It will be open until March at the Public Archive of the State of S\u00e3o Paulo. It includes 17 maps (several of which are reproduced in this article and on this magazine\u2019s website), as well as photographs and notebooks containing the records of fieldwork done by engineers and cartographers. At the entrance to the exposition, a map measuring 5 meters long and almost 2 meters high compares the original\u2014winding\u2014courses of the Tiet\u00ea and Pinheiros rivers as they crossed Greater S\u00e3o Paulo in 1916, with their corrected courses, in 2013. This graphic superposition of the routes summarizes the ideas and interests that resulted in a city of straight, well-concealed, malodorous rivers crossed by pedestrian walkways that are usually narrow.<\/p>\n

Diseases and the Light Company<\/strong>
\nAt the end of the 19th century, fear of death was the principal argument in favor of changing the courses of the rivers in the town of S\u00e3o Paulo that had been unchanged for centuries. It was thought that stagnant water in the alluvial floodplains that were by then receiving residential sewage and accumulated slop from pets, forming the so-called mud islands, was fostering the spread of epidemics like yellow fever and typhoid that had struck the residents of the state\u2019s major cities. Therefore, it was to make the rivers flow faster and prevent disease that engineers in charge of the Floodplains Sanitation Commission and shortly thereafter, of the State Sanitation Commission, ordered the straightening of the watercourses and the opening of canals along the Tamanduate\u00ed and Tiet\u00ea. In an article published in 2012, historian Janes Jorge, professor at Unifesp who helped plan the exhibit, observed that epidemics had begun to be less frequent, mainly because of the discovery of the true causative agents, but the bad odor persisted: in 1927, the Tiet\u00ea river was receiving 30 tons of sewage a day. Other cities, like Chicago, Washington, London, and Moscow were experiencing similar problems as they grew, until they built sewage treatment plants.<\/p>\n

The city of S\u00e3o Paulo was expanding rapidly, accompanying the increase in production by coffee plantations in the state\u2019s interior: its population rose from 15,000 in 1850 to 30,000 in 1870, 240,000 in 1900, and 548,000 in 1920\u2014by which time S\u00e3o Paulo had established itself as a commercial and industrial center\u2014to 1.3 million in 1940 and 6 million in 1960. This accelerated growth favored the settlement of the floodplains, areas naturally subject to flooding but eyed as sites for the construction of homes and factories. Growth also advanced on the estuaries of the rivers. The Saracura Creek, a tributary of the Anhangaba\u00fa, was the first to be covered over and disappear, in 1906. Increasingly corralled in this way, rivers overflowed their natural boundaries and floods became more intense, frequent, and damaging, justifying more drastic actions to correct their course. At first, under proposals like that made by sanitary engineer Saturnino de Brito in 1926, the plans were to align the principal rivers so as to reconcile their different uses\u2014transportation, recreation, fishing, water supply, flood control, and production of electric power\u2014but things didn\u2019t work out that way.<\/p>\n

\"The

Public Archives of the State of S\u00e3o Paulo <\/span><\/a> The original and corrected trajectories of the Tamanduate\u00edPublic Archives of the State of S\u00e3o Paulo <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe quality of the plans for straightening the course of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s rivers declined and the interests of the residents were ignored, owing to a series of economic and political circumstances,\u201d says Jorge. \u201cThe changes almost exclusively favored the production of electricity, expressways for cars, and private exploitation of floodplain lands.\u201d The initial plans were compromised, largely because of the influence of the Canadian company The S\u00e3o Paulo Trainway, Light and Power Company, better known as \u201cLight,\u201d which had a monopoly over the production and distribution of electric power in the region of S\u00e3o Paulo. To be certain of having enough water with which to run the Cubat\u00e3o hydroelectric plant, Light had reversed the course of the Pinheiros and received the right to occupy the floodplains.<\/p>\n

A December 1928 decree determined that the \u201chigh water mark\u201d of the 1929 flood would form the boundary of the area that Light could occupy. Several researchers believe that Light opened the floodgates of the Guarapiranga dam in order to enlarge the flooded area and thus be given more land, even though its action would exacerbate the damage done by one of the city\u2019s worst floods. \u201cFrom then on, a land inspector started prohibiting people from using the floodplain, whether to play soccer or bring goats to drink water,\u201d said geographer Odete Seabra in an interview she gave to the Estado de S\u00e3o Paulo in 2009. In her doctoral dissertation, submitted at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo in 1987, now considered a classic study about the settlement of the floodplains of the Tiet\u00ea and Pinheiros rivers, Seabra demonstrated, using depositions, documents, and newspaper reports, how Light had made the flood worse by releasing water from its dams. According to Seabra, Light assumed the de facto monopoly, and by opening and closing the gates of the Guarapiranga dam, drove out the watermen who were mining sand and gravel from the Pinheiros. Later, the company attempted to resolve the disputes with the owners of lands near the rivers by building ring roads that made permanent the occupation of the rivers\u2019 floodplains. The solution found to reduce the persistent floods was to deepen the channel of the Tiet\u00ea. From 2002 to 2006, the river was lowered an average of 2.5 meters by removing 9 million cubic meters of earth and trash at a cost of R$1.1 billion, significantly reducing the likelihood of future overflows.<\/p>\n

Hidden Waterfalls<\/strong>
\n\u201cWe started moving away from the rivers when they ceased to serve the functions of communication and transportation,\u201d says historian Iris Kantor, of USP. \u201cUntil the end of the 18th century, there had been a culture that valued rivers as a means of transporting goods and people to inland areas.\u201d One proof of that strategic use of the rivers, according to Kantor, is the Carta geographica de proje\u00e7\u00e3o espherica da Nova Lusitania ou Am\u00e9rica Portuguesa e Estado do Brasil (Spherical Projection Geographic Map of Nova Lusitania or Portuguese America and the State of Brazil), which was produced, from a set of 80 maps, by Antonio Pires da Silva Pontes Leme, an astronomer from the state of Minas Gerais, commissioned by the Portuguese government, which was interested in establishing the borders of its colony in America. It was completed in 1798. \u201cMy geographer colleagues say that, comparatively speaking, that map has more detailed information than others about the courses of the rivers, many of which are still very hard to see on satellite images.\u201d Only in northern Brazil are rivers still important for the transportation of people and goods because of the difficulties of building and maintaining roads in the middle of the jungle.<\/p>\n

In selecting material from the colonial period for the exhibit at the Public Archive, the team found an impressive map entitled Planta do rio Tiet\u00ea ou Anemby na capitania de S\u00e3o Paulo desde a cidade do mesmo nome at\u00e9 \u00e0 sua conflu\u00eancia com o rio Grande ou Paran\u00e1 (Map of the Tiet\u00ea or Anemby River in the Captaincy of S\u00e3o Paulo from the City of the Same Name to its Confluence with the Grande or Paran\u00e1 River). Kantor was suspicious of the authenticity of the claimed authorship\u2014the name of Jos\u00e9 Cust\u00f3dio de S\u00e1 e Faria was written in pencil on the back of the map. She consulted the work by historian Isa Adonias and the digital database of the National Library in Rio de Janeiro and concluded that the map is probably an anonymous edition of an old hydrographical map of the Tiet\u00ea that was made in 1789 by S\u00e3o Paulo cartographer Francisco Jos\u00e9 de Lacerda e Almeida, who surveyed the length of the course of the Tiet\u00ea and its tributaries in 1788 and 1789, at the request of the then-governor of the state of Mato Grosso. The version found recently dates a little later than 1810 and belonged to the collection of the former Geographical and Geological Institute of S\u00e3o Paulo. It contains a lot of historical and ethnographic information that did not appear on the original 1789 map. The map details the waterfalls, ports, and large farms that travelers would pass as they traveled in the direction of the Paran\u00e1 River. \u201cIt is truly a practical navigation itinerary, in which the places and points of fluvial and land trajectory are marked over which canoes and freight would have to be portaged or pulled by pilots and crew using ropes,\u201d Kantor observes. (See below a portion of the map; the complete version is on this magazine\u2019s website)<\/p>\n

\"The

Public Archives of the State of S\u00e3o Paulo <\/span><\/a> The two faces of the Northwest: In 1868, the same region was seen both as \u201clands occupied by ferocious Indians\u201d in the Atlas do Imp\u00eario do Brasil (Atlas of the Empire of Brazil)…Public Archives of the State of S\u00e3o Paulo <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The map depicts the Itapura Falls, almost at the mouth of the Tiet\u00ea, one of the approximately 150 waterfalls of the Tiet\u00ea that were wiped out by the reservoirs built for the hydroelectric plants that also transformed other rivers in S\u00e3o Paulo and other states, generating electricity but also causing silting and reducing the diversity of fish and other aquatic organisms. \u201cThe state\u2019s inland cities do not need to commit the same stupidities as we did in S\u00e3o Paulo,\u201d Jorge warns. However, what we are seeing in the meantime are inland cities that attempt to be modern by channeling, covering up, or filling in rivers that, when exposed, exhibit an increasing load of pollutants.<\/p>\n

In 2002, only 17% of household waste generated in the 645 municipalities of S\u00e3o Paulo State was treated before it was discharged into the rivers, thus reducing water quality and biological diversity, according to a study coordinated by Luiz Antonio Martinelli of the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (Cena), affiliated with USP\/Piracicaba. In 2006, Juliano Groppo and Jorge de Moraes, of that same group, verified that the degradation of water quality in the Piracicaba River basin, one of the most jeopardized in the previous study, persisted. \u201cThe agencies responsible for water quality say that more sewage is being treated, but we haven\u2019t seen a palpable improvement in the region\u2019s rivers,\u201d says Martinelli. \u201cI don\u2019t know where the problem lies. We have a good set of laws now, but something isn\u2019t working. We have to figure out where we\u2019ve gone wrong.\u201d In 2013, using as basis samples collected at 360 points in the state, Davi Cunha and other researchers from USP S\u00e3o Carlos and the Environmental Company of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo (Cetesb), found that water quality continued to be below the limits imposed by legislation.<\/p>\n

Can Rivers Recover?<\/strong>
\n\u201cWe need to understand historic moments,\u201d suggests architect Fernando de Mello Franco, secretary of urban development for S\u00e3o Paulo. In 2005 he completed his doctorate on settlement of the alluvial floodplains and plains of the S\u00e3o Paulo basin at the USP School of Architecture. S\u00e3o Paulo, he emphasizes, is no longer a transit point for merchants, migrants, and immigrants. \u201cWe are at a turning point with new concepts such as urban landscape planning, in which transformation of our land is not undertaken primarily to accommodate production, but to protect life. The landscape is not a gift, we do not enjoy the landscape as a 16th century traveler would, we are the ones who are building it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"...

Public Archives of the State of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/span><\/a> … and as \u201cunpopulated lands\u201d in the map produced by the Immigration Promotion Society of S\u00e3o PauloPublic Archives of the State of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Now people are trying to recover a little of the lost landscape. As part of the program for improving the ring roads, construction of a bike path over the Pinheiros River, connecting Cidade Universit\u00e1ria to Parque Villa Lobos, is supposed to begin in 2014. And, by the end of 2014, according to Costa e Silva, the first stage of the Tiet\u00ea cleanup should be finished. It consists of cleaning out and improving the appearance of the river\u2019s tributaries and creeks in eight municipalities near the source of the river\u2014Aruj\u00e1, Mau\u00e1, Po\u00e1, Ferraz de Vasconcelos, Suzano, Mogi das Cruzes, Biritiba-Mirim and Sales\u00f3polis\u2014that are home to about a million people. \u201cGetting rid of pollution does not mean simply keeping the sewage out of the rivers,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a complicated operation that also involves restoring the rivers\u2019 flow rate, reducing silting, controlling drainage, and encouraging people to plant trees as a means of increasing soil permeability in urban areas. In November 2013, a study was made about replacing the present open storm drains that allow trash to enter the rivers with grates that would hold back a good part of the waste. \u201cWe are helping the cities,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s no use arguing that the cities and their residents don\u2019t want this.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the results become visible, Costa e Silva intends to launch public campaigns against throwing trash into the rivers\u2014at present, environmental education posters are not having any effect, he observes, given the current discouragement about the situations of the rivers. Residents of S\u00e3o Paulo have now mobilized to encourage people to value the city\u2019s creeks and rivers. In early 2013, geographer Jana\u00edna Yamamoto Santos, director of the cartographic collection unit of the Public Archive, participated in a post-Carnival samba ensemble that paraded along the covered portion of the \u00c1gua Preta Creek, in Pompeia.<\/p>\n

The Tamanduate\u00ed River\u2014known as Sete Voltas and used in the 17th century by residents of what was then the town of S\u00e3o Paulo to transport tiles, ceramics, fruits and grains in wooden canoes\u2014is now imprisoned in a narrow bed under the Avenida do Estado, one of the most arid parts of the city of S\u00e3o Paulo. \u201cThe Tamanduate\u00ed could have had a bike path and trees, but its just a sewer, it\u2019s painfully ugly. Does it have to be that way?\u201d asks Jorge. \u201cEveryone accepts the idea that S\u00e3o Paulo has to be ugly, but it doesn\u2019t have to be. Now we can reconcile urban development and esthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nImplementation of geographical information system technology (SIG) in historical research. (13\/05444.4<\/a>);\u00a0Grant mechanism<\/strong>\u00a0Regular Line of Research Project Award; Coordinator<\/strong> Luis Antonio Coelho Ferla \u2013 Unifesp; Investment<\/strong> R$51,907.60.<\/p>\n

Scientific Articles<\/em>
\nJORGE, Janes. Rios e sa\u00fade na cidade de S\u00e3o Paulo, 1890-1940<\/a>. Hist\u00f3ria e Perspectivas<\/strong>. v. 25, n. 47, p. 103-24. 2012.
\nJORGE, Janes. S\u00e3o Paulo das enchentes, 1890-1940<\/a>. Hist\u00f3rica<\/strong>. n. 47, p. 103-24. 2012.
\nKANTOR, Iris. Mapas em tr\u00e2nsito: proje\u00e7\u00f5es cartogr\u00e1ficas e processo de emancipa\u00e7\u00e3o pol\u00edtica do Brasil (1779-1822)<\/a>. Araucaria<\/strong>. v. 12, n. 24, p. 110-23. 2010.
\nCUNHA, D.G.F. et al<\/em>. Resolu\u00e7\u00e3o Conama 357\/2005: an\u00e1lise espacial e temporal de n\u00e3o conformidades em rios e reservat\u00f3rios do estado de S\u00e3o Paulo de acordo com seus enquadramentos (2005\u20132009)<\/a>. Engenharia Sanit\u00e1ria e Ambiental<\/strong>. v. 18, n. 2, p. 159-68. 2013.
\nMARTINELLI, L.A. et al<\/em>. Levantamento das cargas org\u00e2nicas lan\u00e7adas nos rios do estado de S\u00e3o Paulo<\/a>. Biota Neotropica<\/strong>. v. 2, n.2, p. 1-18. 2002.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maps depict the transformations in form and function of S\u00e3o Paulo rivers","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[203,241,265],"coauthors":[5968],"class_list":["post-144654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cover","tag-architecture","tag-history","tag-urbanism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144654"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=144654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}