June
15
2010
By Lindsay Mackenzie
São Paulo is a gritty city. The economic centre of the fifth most populous country in the world, São Paulo is Rio’s responsible older sibling; it does the work while Rio has all the fun. Though not a tourist hot spot, it is fascinating in its own way.
As an emerging-market megacity, São Paulo offers a glimpse of the shape of things to come in our increasingly urbanized future. And there’s no better place to contemplate that view than from the 41st floor of the Edificio Italia.
You can begin to take in the scale of one of the world’s largest cities from the 360-degree viewing deck outside the bar/restaurant, Terraco Italia. Though not particularly notable for its overpriced, underwhelming food, the bar does serve a mean caipirinha (a deceptively strong mixture of muddled lime, crushed ice, and cachaça—a liquor similar to white rum). All the better to appreciate the view with: as far as you can see, in every direction, sprawling city. You’d swear you could see the earth start to curve before you see the city limits of São Paulo.
At one end of the viewing platform, the sprawl is interrupted by the looming mass of Oscar Niemeyer’s curvy Copan Building, circa 1950. A São Paulo icon, this building is notable not only for its size but for the social experiment that its construction instigated. Neimeyer intentionally placed rooms of vastly different sizes next to each other in order to encourage a mixing of social strata that would otherwise rarely happen in class-conscious Brazil. Today the building is so big—home to an estimated 5,500 inhabitants—that it literally has its own zipcode. Only in São Paulo.
With approximately 20 million inhabitants, the population of the city of Sao Paulo is greater than about 70% of all of the countries in the world. In other words, it’s massive. It’s a place whose vastness, chaos and complexity can easily make your head spin. Or maybe that’s just the caipirinhas.
Lindsay Mackenzie is a freelance tour guide and photographer who has travelled to 50 countries all over the world. Her expertise is about as large and varied as Sao Paulo itself. If you're planning a South American adventure, check out our trip planning website so we can point you in the right direction.