Brazzil

This "text" is completely imparcial, just as this magazine, you claimed the workers party was defeated, but you denied to speak that it controls more cities now than in the last ellection, you also fail to point out that Marta Suplicy become Mayor of Sao Paulo after a Huge crisis due to corruption by the ex-mayor Celso Pitta(please note the fact that Serra´s vice mayor used to be Pitta´s Finances Secretary and that he is involved in over 5 judicial issues).
Marta Suplicy has increased the public schools and did a great job in the recover of the infra-structure of the city and the fact that she lost the ellection is not due to Serra being better than her, but because she lacked the support of part of the Workers party, including the support of her ex-husband, The Senator Luiz Suplicy, wich was the most voted Senator of the State of Sao Paulo.

There is a much larger lesson urban planners can learn from the scenario presented in Janer Cristaldo collumn. In the 1970's and 1980's Chicago was much like, but not as bad as Sao Paulo. Wide patches of segregation is nothing more than an infection that can be hidden but will not go away. It can be treated as an untreated illness. It will only grow worse, build up and eventually damage the whole. This may not affect you, but it will certainly effect the offspring you leave in it's wake. In Chicago, St. Louis and other large U.S. cities during the 1960's, Large high rise apartment buildings were constructed (in good faith) to supply housing for the poor. On the surface it appeared a good deed. Under the surface, they were designed to keep the poor with the poor. Who wants to live next door to "them" right? They can be over there and WE can be over here. It only took 10 years to find out what a grave mistake that was. The buildings became massaive complexes of crime, drugs and dispair. How was the rich affected? Chicago's international image was one of the highlighted crime that happened from within. Then the wealthy found out that these pockets of the poor were living in areas of the city that were prime locations. Local planners soon found out that is is far better for the lives of everyone to desegrate and assimulate the poor within the entire community. The 10 miles of high rise apartment buildings are nearly completely torn down now. The areas of the city where the rich live with the poor is not perfect, but the rich are no longer scared to travel in areas where only the poor use to live. (near the beaches, parks and lake shore) I'm not writing this to encourage the politicians in your city to allow the poor the live near the rich because I know that will not happen in my lifetime. What I am saying that when the politicians DO decide that they need to start providing better housing and living conditions for the poor that they spread the solution throughout the community. If you have 100 poor families spreaded throughout a neighborhood of wealthy in subsidized housing many things happen. 1) They start copying the habits of their environment. 2) Those in the environment offer assitance to lift them up instead of pushing them down. 3) The fear of the wealthy turns into an understanding of those who have not. 4) The city will not elimate poverty, merely control it. 5) Those who lift themselves out of poverty will become some of the stronger products of their environments. I know, I'm one of those products.
Marvin McNeil, a Black man from Chicago