annenberg media ♪ caioning sponsoredenrg/cb narrator: since 19, latin america has been one of e most rapidly urbaning regions on earth. nowhere are the sults more dramatic than in sao paulo, brazil, the third largest city in the world.

in this anatomy of a mega-city, we'll explore: the urban geography of immigtion and ethnic diversity, squaer settlements anself-construction. sao pa brazil. with its crowded boulevards and massive skyscrapers, it seemswealthy as any city in the world. withsao paulo is uniqueards among latin american cities. in the earlyart of t 2, when places like rio de janeiro copied traditional european styles of construction, sao paulo was following a distinctly american model of urbanism. imitating the forms of chicago and new york, sao paulo built upward, growing vertically very quickly. but in a huge ring around ty

slies a very different, growurbaenvient.ly very quickly. here, stretchingor miles, is a city of self-built structures in various stages of completion. they line hillsides and rocky stets where some of sao paulo's newest immigras struggo ild mes om brick and c where some of sao paulo's alaide and her family came to sao paulo from northeastern brazil. ( alaide speaking portuguese ) translator: from there my father came first to work. came i as a ma,my motwas amstres narrator:alaide mar, a northeastern mignt keerse. they coun't afford even mar, the cheapestenn thcity, so thee on unclaimed land on the outskirts of sao paulo.

they began building this house when their first daughtewas. 11 years ago, translator: whenhe was eightons old,) we movedo this house. firsto help things a bit.thent we theilfo rooms on top, and that's where we are now. we wilcoue build on but it's not clearf or migrants lalaide josbuild. will ever be part of the wealthy city that seems so far away. tokyo in east asia, along with los angeles in the u.s. and mexico city, are defined by geographers as mega-cities tountryf azil, the ga-city ofaoaumous size. arhas joined the ranks of these world-famousetpolises,s

wi a population of 1milliopeople at the startof t 21st century. sao paulo is a city of immigrants, who built it neighborhood by neighborhood. the first immigrants to arrive were portuguese explorers and jesuit missionaries, who settled here in 1554 and oughwithhem azil's language a religion. bureal growth did not begin between 1880 and the 1950s,4 more than five million italians came to sao paulo, atacted by jobs in a booming coffee industry. along with these agricultural workers came small business owners and craftsmen who established an italian enclave cled bixiga , geographer fisco scarlatost nestudies immigration patterns

assimilation and the expansion of sao paulo. him,iss t onlycamic. he was an artisan anhe. myaterl grandfher came at the beginning ofhe century. narrator: e factory is sti in theamily day,bigger an. bias saoau grew around it,ed and rthe neighborhoodecameave. an important part of the city's mainstream. but the italians did not have bixiga to themselves for long. (drmi sea afteslavery was abolished in brazil in 1888, freed slaves moved into the city. they were attractoixigaby i i.

their afro-brazilian legacy is the neighborhood sambachool.,() anslator fothe black culture, the scols part ofe ighborhood. represents the neighborhood, . the neighborod is not ; it has blacks, aicans, anvai-vai is aexession of at. ( samba-style drumming ) speaking portuguese ) translator: the city absorbed the different waves of immigras, but each group had troubleinteg, because it was so diverse. soach group created its owlittle world. you can't say the city s one identity today; eachroup ilt(iwild cheering.)

narrator: although they bega arriving in 1908 eachroup japanese immigration to brazil accelerated llowing world war ii. the devastation suffered by japan sent a wave of immigrants looking for new opportunities outside their country. sao ulo was a popular destination. ttoday, sao paulooasts ighbthe largest pulation of japanese ople and their descendants outside of japan. but do people here consider tmselves to be az? translator: el more brazilian an japanese. eu também. anslator: me, too. interviewer: por que? translator: because i was born here, live here. i've never been to japan. translator: more japanese, but also brazilian, because my children and grandcldren

are all brazilian. but when japan and bral play against each other, i cheer for the japanese-- my children, for brazil. ( speaking portuguese, laughing ) kingore ) translator: but now i'veeen in bzil i wfoma yea.n japan, i'm now brazilia rrator: by 1960, wn thisave of immigration had slowed, the city, bulging at its seams, boasted 13 million residents. and then yet another group of immigrants began to pour in. ( children shouting ) this group came from brazil's. between 1955 and 1980, more than five millionrrived, attracted by the promise of work and a better life. but an already crowded city could not absorb them.

so they began to bui tir own homes and neighborhoods, but an albrick by brick,ity couon the periphery.m. this so-called "selconstruction" caused the city to spread even farther. ( scarlato speaking portuguese ) translator: the gigantic size of sao paulo, in a horizontal sense, is aesult of self-construction. in a chaotic, disorganized wayg it spoaneousen e in all direcons.uction. in a chaotirrator:rganized wayg today, saoaulo h swelled toncompass over 300 square miles, stretching more than 50 miles from end to end. ma oe new neigorhoods were b on st stmostere nocognizedbyt ma oe new neigorhoods but some neighborhoods ifdid progress. jardim valkíria, or "garden othe valkyries,"

was uas a colctionters mof cardboard scks.ago slow, solid ildings appeared. stores and crches opened, streets were paved and some utilities were installed. storbus routes connected the neighborhood to the city center. wiouofficial recogtind ownershi, these opemain squatters. so their community leaders are negotiating with the city government for land titles and city services. speaking portugues ) translator:itles the first things we want here are day care, a health clinic and a school. these are the three things we need most urgently. narrator:if these ns receive official recognition, a path toward assimilationh behind and integratiofore them,

anslator: i wa to stay here, finish t house and connue. e k. naator immigratioto saoaulo s slowedgain, ( speaking porguese )slato, orwirojectopn exce5 tth is ci, which,powiofl migr s sinher case, has crsed. saothe urban geography of immigration and ethnic diversity real a complex pattern of squatter settlements and self-construction.

with luck and hard work, the west residents will get their chance to share in the wealth and sophistication thats sao paulo. narrator: large tropical raiforests are qukly shing.rld, are we examine sevel emesss, ixb than sincluding:16of bs inor . opical foresecology;

maall of sustainabevelopme ans; e amazon rain forest-- and its dirsity ofife.worldfor s the forest ecosystem iselicate bae of plants and animals, soil and water. like geography, ecology is an integrative science, bringi together many proems into one view. ecologist daelepstad whether he's gria iseseainheorescanopy of worsen. or mapng ion cpu a spatial pl the future othe amazon, ndstan t future. tonderstan we really have to go back in time and ink about the first people who arrived in the amazoon, ndstan t future. tonderstan who camep the rive--

and ink about the first people who arrived in the amazoon, and even these psented ndstanobstacles. tonderstan ifouo rth on many ofseibutars--s who anradsthe rive-- and ink about the first people who arrived in the amazoon, rrator:chthe rivetrs thatwhich locatsented in amazoa in the 1h century eud and built cities like belém, the rain forest was seen as a rich, but impenetrableesource. until the 1970s, belém was accessible to the rest ofrazil only by water. then came a wave of road building. so farthe major investmes eaerenofheasstcture coenatedg thanalong e soutwithoaou have c, a wave of road building. and with cheaper access, a lot of economic activities become profitable. narrator: two of the biggest activities are cattle ranching and farming.

( chain saw buzzing ) buthe one at clears the nd everything else isogging. so whole newow sprang up herlocated in pará state.nas, this is a boomtown, home to more than 80 sawmills. this is brazil's frontier, a land of opportunity chnortamica's oners on the map, each round saw blads bumany othe most importantt sos new roads into the intior e still dirt and not paved. paving greatly accelerates the change. nepstad: and what we're going to do is just look a little bit into the fute,

imagining th these roads, which are still dirt roads, are all paved, as is slated by the federal government of brazil. narrator: in this simulation, the growing red area represents new deforestation every two years up to the year 2020. so as these roads are paved, deforestation is basically going to march up along those roads. instead of all the deforestation being concentrated along theast and south, we've made inroads into the core of the basin. narrator: at the souern edge of that core, a new economic force is pushing t pavement north. from space, we see fields of soybeans etched in the shrinking forest. brazil is about to overtake the u.s. as the world's leading producer of soy, exporting their crop to millions of chinese consumers and european livestock growers. the soy farmers of mato grosso are very keen on having asphalt

so that they can ship their soybeans to the santarém port and puit on oceangoing freighte and serve the world markets that way. it's much cheaper that way than to go south to the big brazilian ports down south. as that pavement goes through, the ancillary effect of paving, of course, will be to make it cheaper for everyone to do business along that corridor. but let's just imagine for a second two different trajectories for this road. here we see the portion that's not yet been paved-- santarém up here, mato grosso down here. in a business-as-usual situation, as paving goes in here, people will move in along the highways, driven largely by land speculation interests, putting cattle pastures, shifting cultivation. and we can see the deforestation frontier rapidly expanding along this road. but there is reason to think that another scenario is possible. narrator: the lower rates of deforestation e based

onovernmen ctivrcin the environmental laws on the books. brazil has received some help from some new technology and from other ecologists, including chris uhl. uhl is the founder of imazon, a research institute located in the city of belém. the law in pará state says that 50% of all private land must be maintained in forest. until recently, that was very hd to monitor. now, using a system of satellites casearcher carlos sousaig caust that.ps, okgps is realowhat it allows us to do is to pick up signals from the satellites. and thugh ocess of triangulation we can locate oursels rylyn gr and thugh ocess to within about ten meters. four... ey've gour sateites now. we are... probably... in this... area.

mm-hmm. narrator: if the government chooses, can use gps to locate property lines on satlite photographs of the landscape. they can then determine how much of a farmer's land anotg problemeared but eis thenefficient way the cleared land is being used. the most common farming and grazing method here requires the farmer to cut tousandofirm spe,t it dry.ll set by farmers during the dry season to release the nutrients from the vegetation. but the soil's producvity disappears,n sometimes in one or two years. it forces settlers to abandon their land and cut more forest elsewhere. because this requires more land all the time,

it is a form of extensive agriculture. it's called "shifting," "swidden" it's practiced inany s or "slash-and-burn" cultivatio until the forest runs out. this land waabandonedby sgs a few years earlier. the sight of new trees led chris uhl to a surprising and controversial revelation. l:whenirst stted wog wn here, i realhought that the las were extrely fragile wasn'a sss that was usedor a e t wasthats ece ofand l:whenirst sand yet, if u look over here woulha stayed sort ofasded l d ye's clearly going backntrest. this is really a surprise for me. 'tgiatort co back.almeetnk giofand banin ourtoe this is really that geeyoknow,me.

maybese systems not ass d exctedann fact, at migme sot n really a whe no lofeseaorse h hancoeags to devise development guidelines for ranchers, farmers and foresters. and plan their logging roadsd cut lessestively,lectively trs would regrow more quickly in areas whehey have worked. satellite images show why that is so important. y whenhey cu my suounding ees wd sainhe same nessand came . bulldozers damaged lgeasant. y tryio remo and store e ees. vines were cut fm sected trees e year before. narrowccess ads allowe ruer-wheeled skidders to remove just the desired trees with much less damage.

uhl: now, if we look into the following year, the forest scar, the logging scar here has disappeared. up here, we can still see some of that scar. openings up here are so big that one year later, they still haven't been covered by regrowing vines and regrowing forest vegetation. here they have. narrator: the method allows the logger sustainable harvests over many decades, and it helps everyone in the amazon avoid a growingroblem. thallows the sun to dry from the forest floor,e harvest just adding to the fire haza. fire and smoke plus reduced vegetation actually change the micro-climate, decreasing the rainfall and further increasing fires. it's a vicious cycle that is broken by careful tree harvests. as chris uhl learned, e ees grow backif youive em.

t s scovery leton even bi: if ranchers and farmers could use their land more efficiently and for longer periods of time, perhaps both developmentalting . and environmental needs could be accommodated. it has to do with the difference between extensive and intensive agriculture. and bynsive" we anthat a g pofdr as a viable alternative is, w, reachalngin this, of crse, t tine apoaus. narrator: rnear belém, small farms shave been practicing intensive agriculture for decades. by mixing a variety of crops

and by using locally produced organic and mineral fertilizers, thanontinue to farm the same piece of la fony e nepstad: these systems include trees or other perennial crops, fruit crops, black pepper, cacao-- which is chocolate. even cattle ranching can be made to be more or less sustainable. narrator: intensification means experimenting with new breeds of cattle and grasses, and it mean allowing some pastures to recover while cattle graze in others. ( speaking portuguese ) translator: because grazing was degrading my fields, the farm didn't have a means to produce new grass. ( continuing in portuguese ) so, i decided to research what i'd seen done in other places and i intensified my planting. of course, there was an initial cost,

but the return has been good, and it's paying for itself. narrator: these practices work well on a small scale in the eastern amazon, but can they be used throughout amazonia? this remains to be seen. the first results of this research showed that we have around 50% to 60% of the state appropriate for loggg. that we have around and whene put together... state narrator: imazon has determined that, overall, about 20% of pará state's land area could potentially be developed. with the use of regional maps, imazon is helping to plan a future that is acceptable to both environmentalists and developers. in doing so, they walk a thin line. ...that are not appropriate for logging.

aroacwhh ceaiy characteri asvalundouslywoer dersityprese at i rlizehat this landss ind, will contie toe inhabited. and the goal is to come up with win/win situation tense thaconsertion of the forest occurs, that bio-diversity is preserved, and also that people that live in this landscape have a hh and just quality of life. narrator: this balancing act must take place in an environment that is more resilient than scientists once thought. ate pressures on the foreste nt. thgi they include further drying provoked by deforestatio by el niño, by global warming. they include extensive agriculture, which provides abundant sources of ignition for forests that are rendered flammable by drought or by logging. and all of those are coming together

in an expanding frontier that's going to move up along the roads that are being paved into the heart of the world's largest rain forest.

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