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I decided to start this tread because I noticed there are people from all parts of the world here, and I find amusing the descriptions of the places where they live.
I would like to hear how your city works, and how is living in a small town in Germany or a metropolis in Asia or a city in the american midwest. Share your experiences!
I will start with the place where I live, São Paulo. Actually I live in Campinas, a 1 million pp city 100 km far from São Paulo. But as nobody here know it, I will speak of SP.
The biggest distinction of São Paulo from american metropolises is that there is no well defined downtown with lots of skycrapers. The tallest building in São Paulo has only 45 floors, and most buildings range from 10 - 30 floors. No huge skycrapers. It's instead a homogeneous vast jungle of medium density. The total area of the metropolis has 8000 sq kilometers. You get a almost endless background (there are few places where you can see the city's border) of small and medium buildings mixed with houses. Socketed in this background and spread around you have some distinct sections.
The old downtown, with run-down office buildings, some historical constructions, and a crowded popular commercial area.
The Paulista Avenue and it's surroundings, a sort of "Wall Street", with lots of rich skycraper's build from 80/today mostly belonging to banks. An agitated cultural life (lots of cinemas, theates, bars) and elite commecial zones, with stores like Baccarat, Giorgio Armani, ect
The "new" downtown, with very tall and modern-looking buildings, similar to the ones of Hong-Kong. Little cultural life, just extremaly expensive offices from multinationals, like Microsoft.
You have also degraded zones, rich zones, but all inserted in the urban caos of buildings...
Mass transit don't work well, the overall traffic jam gets regularly to 200 km, from an average of 120 km. The rich people uses helicopters as cars, so it's the second city in numer of helicopters. It's also violent and very poluted, although not as much as Mexico City.
I would like to hear how your city works, and how is living in a small town in Germany or a metropolis in Asia or a city in the american midwest. Share your experiences!
I will start with the place where I live, São Paulo. Actually I live in Campinas, a 1 million pp city 100 km far from São Paulo. But as nobody here know it, I will speak of SP.
The biggest distinction of São Paulo from american metropolises is that there is no well defined downtown with lots of skycrapers. The tallest building in São Paulo has only 45 floors, and most buildings range from 10 - 30 floors. No huge skycrapers. It's instead a homogeneous vast jungle of medium density. The total area of the metropolis has 8000 sq kilometers. You get a almost endless background (there are few places where you can see the city's border) of small and medium buildings mixed with houses. Socketed in this background and spread around you have some distinct sections.
The old downtown, with run-down office buildings, some historical constructions, and a crowded popular commercial area.
The Paulista Avenue and it's surroundings, a sort of "Wall Street", with lots of rich skycraper's build from 80/today mostly belonging to banks. An agitated cultural life (lots of cinemas, theates, bars) and elite commecial zones, with stores like Baccarat, Giorgio Armani, ect
The "new" downtown, with very tall and modern-looking buildings, similar to the ones of Hong-Kong. Little cultural life, just extremaly expensive offices from multinationals, like Microsoft.
You have also degraded zones, rich zones, but all inserted in the urban caos of buildings...
Mass transit don't work well, the overall traffic jam gets regularly to 200 km, from an average of 120 km. The rich people uses helicopters as cars, so it's the second city in numer of helicopters. It's also violent and very poluted, although not as much as Mexico City.
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