An article in the current issue of Folha de Sao Paulo talks about this blog's old bugbear: stone-age sidewalks in Sao Paulo.
As had been immediately obvious to my neophyte eye, the article mentions how pavements are the individual responsibility of the privately-owned buildings whose land they adjoin. The municipality only has responsibility for sidewalks in front of government-owned buildings !
New regulations are apparently being brought in to enforce more pedestrian-friendly walkways. Hmm. I'm still not holding my breath. Of course, the only sane solution is for Sao Paulo to act completely out of character and take responsibility for all its pavements. Perhaps someone should offer them a translation of John Donne's famous words:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe [or Brazil] is the less.
As I keep saying, a society stands or falls by the quality of its pavements. Donne's poem, written close to the founding of modern Brazil, sees this with a clarity which still eludes that country in the twenty-first century.
As had been immediately obvious to my neophyte eye, the article mentions how pavements are the individual responsibility of the privately-owned buildings whose land they adjoin. The municipality only has responsibility for sidewalks in front of government-owned buildings !
New regulations are apparently being brought in to enforce more pedestrian-friendly walkways. Hmm. I'm still not holding my breath. Of course, the only sane solution is for Sao Paulo to act completely out of character and take responsibility for all its pavements. Perhaps someone should offer them a translation of John Donne's famous words:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe [or Brazil] is the less.
As I keep saying, a society stands or falls by the quality of its pavements. Donne's poem, written close to the founding of modern Brazil, sees this with a clarity which still eludes that country in the twenty-first century.
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