I love living in Sao Paulo, and since I published an article yesterday about the future of software and data-center outsourcing, which I'm an advocate of, then it's only fair to tell the whole story... because there's some problems here too.
An adverse effect of a society that has so much wealth, natural resources, and the world's leader in the production of soft commodities, is that this society owns the dubious distinction of having the worst distribution of said wealth, which causes for resentment from the lower classes, of the upper class. This resentment converts to crime, and often times of a violent nature, which is the caveat of living here.
São Paulo’s crime statistics usually make for queasy reading. But reports still try to look on the bright side, despite the alarming totals. Murders, for example, are down 7% in the first four months: 2,127 people were killed this year, down from 2,277 in the same period last year. (By way of comparison, in the 12 months to March 2005, 195 people were murdered in London also down 7.6% over the previous year.) More encouraging is the 15% drop in murders during car robberies, or latroncinos; the 99 cases reported this year have resulted in 106 deaths. Robberies are down too, from 57,752 for the first three months of 2004 to just 53,343 this year, an 8% decline.
But this won’t relieve the city’s rich, who have suffered from a spate of high-profile break-ins recently. Since January, 13 luxury-apartment buildings have been taken over by organised-crime gangs and stripped of their cars, electronic equipment, jewels and cash, while residents were held at gunpoint in underground garages. Houses in the posh Jardims district have been targeted more recently. All this despite tremendous investment in private security, including high electric fences, bullet-proof gates and regular patrols by private guards.
Still, I love living in Sao Paulo.
