The "redevelopment of central areas" as global competition strategy for cities – global city region of São Paulo

Abstract

This paper analyses the contemporary production of the so-called ‘post modern urbanism’ in the city of São Paulo, the Brazilian global metropolis. Initially, it raises the theoretical concepts that fundament and enable the comprehension of the meaning of the ‘post modern urbanism’ and its contrasts to the modern urbanism associated to the urban and industrial society. It leads to the organization of an international reference board of the post modern urbanism in the process of the market globalization, where it finds the Brazilian contemporary production of the post modern urbanism with its experiences on the ‘redevelopment of central areas’. This kind of redevelopment is occurring in some Brazilian cities since 1990, specialy in those ones with social oriented governments with strategic developing programs. Particularly in the city-region of São Paulo, it became an instrument for both - cities inter-competition and even urban centers beneath the same city – struggling to regain the economic boost vanished with the deindustrialization process. In addition to that, the article emphasizes the implications of the post modern urbanistic models on the urban fragmentation and the global city-region governability, once these urban centers fight for regional centrality and global competitiveness, without the convergence of the local and metropolitan planning scales and the city management.