More From Our Geographers

Read more from our interview with Dr. Francisco Scarlato on self-constructed housing in Sao Paulo.

The growth of Sao Paulo since the 1950's goes along with a great surge of industrialization and the beginning of the migration from the northeast. The solution to the housing problems of the new arrivals is solved by the workers themselves, who assume and take charge of building [their] own dwellings. The periphery of the city grows as a result of the worker who buys his plot, buys his building materials, and who, when he isn't at his regular job, that is, Saturday, Sunday, holidays, is building his house. And that's typical of the entire periphery of Sao Paulo.

So today, the gigantic size of Sao Paulo, in a horizontal sense, is a result of self-construction. Self-construction is responsible, in a chaotic, disorganized way, without planning. [It] spontaneously extended the horizons of the periphery in all directions.

It's a problem because, since the city grew spontaneously, by the actions of the worker himself, without help from city planning, today there are dramatic situations of dwellings in high-risk areas, areas prone to avalanches, catastrophes, deaths, floods. It's a situation in which the northeasterners, which make up the bulk of the population, are victims of their own efforts to better themselves, and the irresponsibility of public institutions in handling the housing needs of the periphery.