Cities and social equity: inequality, territory and urban form: detailed report

Abstract

Cities and Social Equity is a report by the Urban Age research team with commissioned pieces from Ipsos MORI, United Nations Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (ILANUD), the Centre for Metropolitan Studies (CEM), Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) and the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University. In 2008, the Urban Age undertook and commissioned research on the five largest cities in South America (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Lima), which culminated in the Urban Age South America conference in São Paulo in December 2008. With a combined population of nearly 60 million and dramatic growth in recent decades, these five cities are places of mix, change and extreme polarisation which can be destabilising, inhumane and wasteful of resources. Cities and Social Equity assesses the impact of inequality in an urban context with comparative research and data collection in the five cities (including innovative mapping of inequality to identify the pockets of privilege and deprivation in each city). While the research work commissioned in the report has a specific focus on the problems facing São Paulo, the region's pre-eminent city, their findings have wider resonance for cities throughout the world.