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Article: Brazil's troubled megalopolis: South America's biggest industrial city is painfully reinventing itself as a service centre; to complete the job, it needs better government: Sao Paulo.(The Americas)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- May 23, 1998
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SAO PAULO
EVER since a coffee boom over a century ago brought money and migrants to Sao Paulo, Brazilians have seen the city as the locomotive of economic growth. By the 1970s, Sao Paulo had not only surpassed in size and wealth its traditional rival, Rio de Janeiro, but it had become the largest industrial city in the southern hemisphere. In those years of Brazil's economic "miracle", the city swelled by a dizzying 5% a year, as the prospect of a job in its factories brought the poor and landless flocking in by the busload from Brazil's north-east. By 1995, the city itself had a population of 10.1m, and the Sao Paulo metropolitan region had 17m people, making it one ...