Sao Paulo's concrete 'scar' becomes a pedestrian oasis

​One weekend not long ago, a small boy operating a remote-control toy car walked freely down the middle of one of the busiest four-lane highways in notoriously congested Sao Paulo.

He passed a jogger resting on the median strip, a bulldog riding a skateboard in the opposite direction and a couple standing in the right lane, languidly sipping coconut water from a freshly hacked husk.

In Brazil’s largest city, where maddening traffic and confusing signage are hallmarks of Paulista life, the car is king. But something funny happens when joggers, strolling lovers, cyclists and dogwalkers drop by the Elevado Presidente Joao Goulard overpass on Sundays.

“Ocupaçao,” as Felipe SS Rodrigues calls it, during a walk along the nearly 3-kilometre elevated highway as children kicked soccer balls ahead.

“It’s occupation. The occupation of spaces. This is a concept that is becoming more common in Sao Paulo,” the 26-year-old architect says.

Rodrigues lives in a building he estimates is barely five metres from the slab of crumbling infrastructure that has for decades bisected this car-dependent megacity of 11.5 million.

At its tightest points, there’s maybe a two-metre gap between the arterial road’s barrier railing and the windows of the graffiti-blighted highrise apartments and office towers surrounding it.

Long an urban eyesore, the highway, erected in 1970, gouges a line through the centre of downtown connecting eastern and western city zones. It was, until last month, originally named after the late general Artur da Costa e Silva, who was installed as Brazil’s president after a 1964 military coup. An estimated 80,000 vehicles a day use the overpass.

But when it isn’t choking with exhaust, sputtering engines, weaving motorcycles and horn blasts on weekdays, the highway with the formerly dictatorial namesake has a truly democratic purpose. As of March this year, it officially doubles as Parque Minhocao during weeknights after 9:30 p.m., from Saturday at 3 p.m. onwards, and crucially, all day Sunday.

That’s usually when the hottest thing on four wheels isn’t a motor vehicle; it’s Buda the slobbering, freewheeling bulldog.

From left: Ezra Teter, Thiago Iglesias, Felipe Rodrigues, Athos Comolatti, members of the Association Parque Minhocao, line up with Buda the skateboarding bulldog. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

“Budaaaa!” coos Thiago Iglesias, trailing the wrinkly-faced pooch as it trundles by on its own skateboard, a spectacle that draws a frenzy of smartphone snaps. (A video of Buda skateboarding at night on the Minhocao recently went viral, logging more than 60 million views on Facebook.)

Iglesias, a skater and friend of the Minhocao park association’s founder Athos Comolatti, began bringing his dog for walks down the Minhocão about a year ago.

“Buda loves it here. This is his track,” Iglesias says.

Although the massive Ibirapuera Park presents an oasis in a concrete desert, the dog owner says, the Minhocao is closer to the heart of downtown for him. He doesn’t need a car to get there.

The Portuguese name Minhocao, as Rodrigues explains, means Big Worm, a reference to the mythical slithering monster that was believed to live underground in Brazil’s southern highlands.

“It was like a joke,” he says, musing that the name likely had something to do with the bendy structure’s worm-like orientation.

Michele Moraes Vieira, 31, left, and her son, Kevin da Silva Vieira, 7, and mother Francisca Moraes de Moura, 53, regularly walk and roller-skate on the MInhocao on Sundays. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

Rodrigues, an activist involved with the Association Parque Minhocao neighbourhood group, has a front-facing view of the Minhocao. He considers it something of a curse Mondays through Fridays, when crushing gridlock is at its worst. Smog hangs heavy in the area.

And then there’s the noise, adds his friend, Ezra Teter, an English teacher from Texas.

“Constant noise,” says Teter, who occupies an apartment also overlooking the Minhocao. “There’s so much concrete. So many reflective surfaces. So many cars, and with the reverberation, it’s one of the loudest places in the city.”

For most of the weekend, though, the Minhocao is a slice of open-air bliss for the neighbourhood.

Coconut vendor Jose Silva sells fresh coconut water at the Minhocao highway park. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

“This is something special,” Rodrigues says. “Because this is about youth not having options for communal spaces in Sao Paulo. For me, it’s a reconnection to São Paulo.”

Unlike in Rio de Janeiro to the east, São Paulo lacks large, open beaches for public leisure.

“The apartments are so small. There’s no free space to do anything,” says Comolatti, the public-spaces crusader who started the Association Parque Minhocao neighbourhood group several years ago.

Comolatti traces the origins of the ephemeral park to the 1990s. In a bid to give nearby residents some respite, the city mandated that the highway close on weekdays from 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., as well as from Saturdays beginning at 3 p.m., and all day Sunday.

Cibele Rodrigues Santoro, 30, lives in an apartment overlooking the Minhocao. ‘I think it’s great because I’m a nutritionist, and besides eating healthy, I think people should practise more sports. So to be able to come to an area like this one every weekend, is something great,’ she says. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

Municipal politicians called for the whole boulevard to be razed, believing it to be the only solution for an urban revival. Some planners still insist the highway should come down.

“The classical critique was that this was a ‘scar’ of the city. So we must tear it down,” Comolatti says. He argues that’s a short-sighted view.

“The city only saw this Minhocao as a car place. They didn’t see the possibility. When it closed at 9:30 at night, it was just some abandoned place,” he says. “So that was no business of the city. Slowly, people just came in without authorization.”

Athos, founder of the Minhocao Park association, on how São Paulo residents use a 4-lane highway as a Sunday park pic.twitter.com/fLDEO9hthE

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@matt_kwong

Owning a car may be a symbol of class and an aspirational goal for some, but park activists note the Minhocao hosts people from all socio-economic levels who just yearn for public space. There are dance parties, marathons and fashion shoots. Teens ride the city’s shared bicycles up the on-ramp.

“There are lots of families. People bring their dogs. This space is really good for São Paulo, especially because it’s in the centre of the city,” says coconut salesman Jose Silva, listening to the Sao Paulo versus Chapecoense soccer match on a portable radio.

Green walls are sprouting on the sides of some buildings. A local theatre troupe, Grupo Esparrama, delights crowds with regular puppet and clown shows staged from the open window of a nearby apartment block.

“And look at that,” Comolatti says, pointing out several people walking in a line. “We’re starting to see tour groups.”

Following years of advocacy and a dream to transform the Minhocao into something like New York City’s High Line — the elevated park in Manhattan that overtook a disused rail line — the official park designation allows for the creation of a management board to discuss park improvements, street cleaning and security.

Ronaldo Galdi, 61, and his wife Valeria, 60, enjoy a coconut water on the elevated highway on a recent Sunday. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

One irony is that motorists have become among the fiercest advocates of the Minhocao. Clearly, they have their own interests as commuters. But Ronaldo Galdi, 61, and his wife Valeria, 60, enjoy the highway’s dual functions.

“I always drive this way, and she does as well,” Ronaldo Galdi says, under the shade of a nearby tree. “It’s a lot of traffic, but it’s necessary. It’s all about cars here.”

When the Galdis moved to Sao Paulo in the 1970s, a Sunday walk down the highway was not an option. Now, with their children grown, the couple seeks out the Minhocao for exercise and fresh air. They might walk for an hour or so. Often, they take their time.

“It takes longer when we stop to have a coconut water,” he says.