Стрелка Пресс: М.
Exploring the edge condition of São Paulo, Justin McGuirk analyses the
different forms of dwelling available to its would-be citizens, and meets some of
the people carving a life for themselves on the verge of this unforgiving metropolis.
Driving anti-clockwise, we take a journey backwards in time, moving from
cardboard favelas and hastily built tower blocks back to modernist social housing
and the factory town built early in the last century. Is this a tale, as the Brazilian
flag attests, of «order and progress»? Are the citizens of the periphery better off
looking after themselves than in the hands of developers and the paternalistic state?
Part road trip and part urban critique, this drive-by portrait makes the case that the
city is best understood not by its centre but by its edge.