(Video transcription)
Hello. I am Lucas Chiconi Balteiro, architect and urbanist, resident of Vila Regente Reijó, Tatuapé region, in São Paulo.
Vila João Migliari was once here, a block of sixty townhouses from the 1950s. The period was the peak of industrialization in the city, which boosted urbanization in Tatuapé region. The houses were used both as rental housing and for local businesses and services.
Since then, the region passed through several transformations, mainly due to the real estate activity that is related to the enrichment of part of its population. The trains, the subway, the malls, and the parks are part of the infrastructure built to promote modifications.
The 20th century concept of worker periphery is no longer true. Nowadays, Tatuapé and Jardim Anália Franco region is one of the most enriched regions of São Paulo – despite being quite diverse. The city’s highest skyscrapers that were built here are a proof that there are new processes going on in the history of the city.
The five houses that resisted the violent demolition in 2019 are witnesses of these processes, mainly of fight for its preservation – even with the different interests of the several agents involved in it. At this moment, the case is in Conpresp, Conselho Municipal de Preservação de São Paulo, to be evaluated and voted for the creation of definitive patrimony in Vilas Operárias Migliaru, composed of the five houses from Tatuapé and other two villages in Belém.
Patrimony is not just an attractive architecture. It involves several memories, even hard ones, like the dictatorship. Also, we must increase the representation of memory from several groups in the city, especially black people. Do you know the churches on the top of the hill in Penha? One of them is a memory from the black community in the neighborhood. To talk about patrimony, we must look at everything and not only to the building we want to turn into a patrimony.
If we aim at urban and territorial balances, we must preserve the cultural, historical, and environmental heritage, especially from a social perspective, to guarantee the right to the city, the different memories of the city.