Social and urban issues

To answer this question, it’s important to be aware that social division isn’t a new phenomenon in cities and that social inequality is one of the problems that destroy humanity. On one side there is a minority who can practically fulfill their desires. On the other hand, there are individuals who live a life with all kinds of deprivation. While rich and poor are spatially segregated, living in slums or in luxury condominiums, the relationships between them are seemingly quiet and normal. It’s amazing but, socially mixed residential areas are already a reality, they’re common in many different places. However, once the low-income population is likely to share the same spaces as the upper classes, prejudices tend to appear, and soon create an association between poverty and crime. The problem is that not everyone feels comfortable sharing space. Therefore, I believe that for a city, or a less exclusive neighborhood, fairer and non-discriminatory manner, it’s still n...

In order to answer this question, we must understand first what attributes make a person set the place where they would like to live. It´s natural that charming neighborhoods with easy mobility and commerce area creates the best atmosphere to live, but comfort means high prices of real estate. Looking at this economic point, people will always seek the best cost benefit and this in itself ends up creating a division between social classes. In Brazil, it seems to be very normal this abysm between social classes, but how can we create more socially mixed residential areas?                 Faced this issue, what we can think at first is that the creation of an mixed area would be practically impossible, and rich people will never accepted to live close with poor people. However, the society evolution show us big changes. In our days, the big families with 5 children are no longer a reality. I know many friends ...

First and foremost, in order to answer this question, we must think why this action should be made and how it could bring benefits. I believe the main reasons to reflect about mix residential areas is to give more opportunities to underprivileged people and the second is to promote a relationship with people from different walks of life. So, let ustake these two points to analyze the importance of creating socially mixed residential areas. Admittedly, nowadays, residential areas are predominantly segregated, there is always a barrier between rich and poor people, which causes an impact in the society. For example, rich children grow up surrounded by the same reality in school and in their neighborhood. Due to it, these children do not have the opportunity to see and live with different people, consequently, it creates a huge distance between them. Getting together people from all walks of life would approach them and decrease the segregation that exists today. However, in my vie...

In Brazil, and to be specific, in São Paulo city, having very rich neighborhoods close than extremely poor neighborhoods is a reality. As an example that can be mentioned is the Morumbi, a rich neighborhood, place known for the huge houses and fancy buildings. Although, Morumbi is also known to be localized near by a large poor community, the Paraisopolis favela. The contrast of those two neighborhoods is the picture of social inequality at country. This question is not too easy to be answered. After read the question quickly, the first answer that happened in my mind was: ‘yes, of course should have more socially mixed residential areas’. But, if you stop and re-read the question, with more attention, might you will be face a uncomfortable feeling inside your head and probably would question yourself: should have very different type of habitation from another one, that we need to wonder whether they can share the same places  to each other? To me, this question should be an...

In order to answer this question we must analise  the city chosen, Rio de Janeiro, whether people really suffer discrimination, living  in two different parts of city that don’t look like the rest. One side, “people of the asphalt”, and other, “people of the hill,  as  known  “Favelas”. Even though they live closely intertwined throughout the city, they live vastly different lives. In more recent times, Favelas have been fueled by the massive migration of rural Brazilians into big cities like Rio, who do not  get a good job and are not able to find affordable housing. These workers, built their own communities with the lack of government presence, this sort of resourcefulness is common in Favelas . So, Their residents created their own association which helps coordinate public projects and resources. In my   view , where we live ,affects our life of changes. Segregated  Communities  are politically weak, because their political...

Socio-spatial segregation can be considered as one of the biggest urban problems nowadays.  It consists on a materialization of the social inequality in the landscape:  the poor and the rich people are separated by the kind, as well as the localization, of their houses, that  are, most of the time, enormously different. Once the poorer people usually live marginalized in bad and small houses, the richer live in great houses or apartment at the best areas of the town. It is a reflection of the combination of a lot of big cities social problems, and  it is caused, in general, by the high costs of the lands and houses allied with the low income of a huge part of the population (what difficult the poor to buy a good residence). Also the lack of urban planning by the governments contributes to this. As a result of these inequalities, many other problems can be increased- like the criminality. Consequently, those who have conditions, prefer to move to separated area...

Firstly, I would like to introduce myself as a resident who has been living close to the Favela Paraisópolis since 1978. As I reside on the 18th floor, at that time I used to observe the incredible population growth mostly of construction workers. Morumbi was at that moment a semi-rural region with a lot of green properties with huge and beautiful houses. I strongly remember how pure was the air in the region. Since the beginning of XXI century, Paraisópolis has been the second most populous slum in São Paulo. At the same time, new rich and closed condominiums had been built nearby. This contributed to a segregation between poor and rich people. In contrast, São Paulo is a complex Metropolis: whilst the city was growing, a lot of town planners attributed social mobility, improvement, expansion and incorporation. Nowadays, I hardly believe that the violence and fear - gun shots are always heard during the night - are caused by the empowerment of drugs in the region. Besides, ...

In order to answer this question, it is essential to determine whether we are talking about an idealistic or a realistic world. The ideal society is the one where there is no social inequality, so the obvious answer to that question would be to first try to increase the life quality of the poorer ones, so that it wouldn't be necessary to decide how those communities should be divided within the residential area.     However, we live in a capitalist world, where social inequality is just an unfortunate effect in order to bourgeois get rich, so socially mixed residential areas are, in fact, real impasses we have to face. In my opinion, our society is already too segregated so all neighborhoods should accommodate people from all social ladders. With initiatives like that we could promote some kind of union between different people that don't usually frequent the same places. This could also, as a long term consequence, help to decrease intolerance, such as racism and xe...