Fernando Haddad Discusses Challenges of Urbanization in Brazil

In Brazil, the mass migration of people from rural to urban areas has overburdened the nation’s public services and aging infrastructure. As citizens have expressed growing dissatisfaction with these and other negative effects of rapid urbanization, recent protests have drawn international attention.

Fernando Haddad, who served as mayor of São Paulo from January 2013 to December 2016, discussed his response to such challenges in an April 10 visit to SIPA. With almost 12 million residents, São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, and in South America, by some margin.

The former mayor suggested that politics are a major barrier to improving Brazil’s infrastructure.

“Brazil has to restructure itself to be sustainable,” Haddad said.

“Mayors who say that they don’t have the budget to fix roadways are running away from politics,” he explained. “They understand that the economic costs in the short term are small and the real cost is political. Unfortunately, Brazil doesn’t have the environment necessary for political debate.”

Haddad also argued that rising living costs are causing low-income people to leave the city.

“It’s much more expensive to bring labor in to serve the city [but] poor people are being forced out,” he said. “It’s bad business economically to put poor people out of the city.”

Haddad said the nation’s judiciary played an important role—by allowing him to implement policies that addressed these issues.

“It was challenging to pass policies because federal law dictated certain [inefficient] practices, so we were surprised when the judiciary helped us,” he explained. “There was no decision where the judiciary did not agree with us. Without it I would not have been able to do anything.”

Bolstered by Brazil’s legal system, Haddad said, he was able to pass policies aimed at improving the economic situation of vulnerable populations such as the LGBT community and drug users.

An audience member asked Haddad how to combat growing anti-government sentiment.

“If you want a good country, you have to recognize who plays well,” he said. “You can’t say that the entire team plays bad. People need to understand that.”

— Serina Bellamy MIA ’17

Editor’s note: Haddad spoke Portuguese; the quotes in this story come from the simultaneous translation.

photo by Mark Sealey