Brazil, violence and cities

An interesting article called "Not as violent as you thought" was released last year by The Economist praising the falling rates of murders in Brazil. The Economimst calls the readers attention, though, that the biggest contributions to the country's overall decline in the number of murders comes from its biggest city, São Paulo. The chart provided by the newspaper shows it very clearly. David Murakami Wood also writes about it on his blog Ubiquitous Surveillance.

What is more interesting from an urbanist point of view (!) is that crime rates, especially violent ones, are the number-one justification (and in fact, very lowdly advertised reason) for the rise in number of condos in Brazil and other Latin American countries. Estate companies normally and very efficiently uses a (blurred) rising sense of insecurity to try and sell more houses and apartments in closed and well technologically-equiped gated-communities. See, for example, the magazine "condomínio segurança", which calls itself as the first Brazilian magazine especialized in condos' security; or this article in Veja São Paulo, showing rising rates of approved horizontal condos in São Paulo between 1998-2004, which points security as the main advantage of living in places like these.

Many scholars have been pointing out that neither these communities are more secure, or crime rates are actually rising, especially if we consider the numbers in relative and proportional terms. The culture (or industry!) of fear in increasingly bigger urban places influences not only the way people use, see, feel, and build public spaces, but also the way we buy and idealise our private places, the way we live in our houses. The condominium industry seems to be happy with that... Some (like Fabio Duarte and Klaus Frey or Tereza Caldeira and Maria Sposito) consider we are renouncing and fearing the city, denying urban life, as we prefer to live enclosed in private enclaves fully-equiped with sports facilities, cinema, gyms, and even houses and apartments, in what Brazilian estate companies are calling "living clubs" (clubes de morar): "where you feel safe, relaxed and at home, all in just one place". Is that what we really want to our cities (a conglomerate of walled and secured enclaves - of different socioeconomic categories - like in the Mexican film "La Zona" or "Zona do Crime" as it is known in Brazil)? I pass!!! And we are starting to see (and discuss) how some ways of living (like more in isolation, surrounded by ubiquitous taken-for-granted-technology, surrounded by walls, in fear, etc.) might very well not be part of the solution to other urban problems. I hope the numbers shown by The Economist (released by the Brazilian Ministry of Health) are, at least partially, true and continue their current tendency of crime rates fall. So that condos enthusiats will have to find other excuses to keep walling our cities.