Sao Paulo
I. Introduction Latin America has been commonly located in our urban vocabularies with its primate cities whose populations outnumber tens of millions. One of those cities is Sao Paulo, Brazil which is sharing the second rank with another Latin American city, Mexico City in the world population list of UN (Rodriguez and Rosenbaum, 2005). The aim of this paper is to examine the urban transformation and transition of Sao Paulo by referring to globalization. In fact, globalization will be held in the paper in articulation with economic, political and social processes which have affected the current situation. Hence I divide my paper into three parts, in the first part of my essay, I am going to talk about economic effects of globalization on the city, Sao Paulo. In the second part, political effects will be discussed while third part is occupied by social reflections of globalization. By and large, two of the latter can not be separated from the former one. II. Globalization versus Sao Paulo; winners and losers Sao Paulo central municipality has a population of 10 million when 38 metropolitan regions are included, population of the city is increased to 18.3 million (Rodriguez and Rosenbaum, 2005). By 1990s onwards, globalization is increased its speed all over the world with its undeniable penetration power. This is a period that we have been witnessing is a period of space flow and timeless time as Castells argues (1998), compression of time and space by the help of constantly developing technologies. New technologies brought about incredible developments capitalist system indeed. Being colonized for centuries, Brazilian city Sao Paulo would be expected to be accustomed to penetration of external economic intervention. However, globalization is such a period with its pros and cons that there is no certainty about the results and outcomes. Following parts of the essay will try to depict the topology of Sao Paulo, a leading example of a developing country