Mito da cidade-global: o papel da ideologia na produção do espaço terciário em São Paulo

Abstract

Throughout the world the global-city has been considered the only urban model able to guarantee the survival of the city within the new context of economic globalization, and the city of São Paulo is no exception. However, empirical data demonstrate that this city has none of the typical "global-city" attributes: it does not take an active part in world economic flows, it does not suffer from a structural de-industrialization, it lacks an advanced service industry leading other economic activities, and so forth. Nonetheless, the prevailing dialogue dominating single neo-liberal thought imposes an ideological discourse according to which this model would be the only acceptable option for the urbanization of São Paulo. Based on this false reality, urban developers successfully channel public investments to support the construction, for example, of a "total business district" in the area of the Pinheiros river, thus directing urgent public priority policies away from widening social inequalities. In a city where nearly half of the population is deprived of the basic rights of citizenship and is not even able to take part in formal urban dynamics, some groups of developers associated with public authorities are able to create a "city within the city": a veritable "First World" island built within an urban matrix comprised of the traditional, archaic social relations of the urban underdevelopment of a country that still has to overcome the difficulties of its colonial heritage.