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Avenida Paulista, São Paulo Brazil

Is São Paulo safe?


I had a relative murdered there. Colleagues assaulted. Acquaintances victims of pick pocketing.  For all those motives, when someone asked me Is São Paulo Safe? , the obvious answer should be a big, bold no, certainly not.

However, this is not my opinion. At least not nowadays.

São Paulo can be considered a safe place. In this article, I will tell you why.

First things first: São Paulo can be either one of the 26 states of Brazil or the capital of this same state. The city has a population of 12.2 million people. This makes it the largest city of Brazil, and one of the largest cities in the world.

Only São Paulo state alone have an area equivalent to the entire United Kingdom, and a population comparable to Spain.

It is important to have those dimensions in mind. We must remember that Brazil is a continental country when we talk about violence. While I would classify Brazilians cities like Maceió or Belém as very dangerous, the question is São Paulo safe have a different answer from me:

Yes, it is relatively safe to live there, depending on few conditions.

Below I will list the three main reasons.

1st  – The Violence is very location-specific.

São Paulo (the capital city, not the state) have 96 districts. 33 of those districts have a homicide rate smaller than the USA (4.8 per 100 thousand inhabitants).

On the other hand, 28 districts have a homicide rate higher than Nigeria.

Zona Leste, Cidade Tiradentes
Zona Leste (the East Zone), the place where is located the dangerous Jaçanã district.

Some districts, like Jaçanã, are more violent than Mexico.

Jardim Paulistano, RIch zone of São Paulo
Jardim Paulista, Jardim Paulistano and neighboring regions have crime indicators comparable to Europe.

Other districts, like Jardim Paulista, are safer than Germany.

Probably the reader is guessing, correctly, that those enormous discrepancies have their origin in income levels and presence of law enforcement. This may lead to the following conclusion:

If near one third of the districts are super-dangerous, then it is dangerous to live there because people need to go to different parts for different reasons!

This is not entirely true. São Paulo have plenty of traffic jams. Enough to rank among the Cities with the worst traffic in the world. Across the years, the city bypassed this problem by developing a peculiar way of urban organization.

Every district of São Paulo works like a mini-city, having nearly everything you need. This makes unnecessary for someone to go out of his neighbourhood frequently and face gigantic traffic jams.

I lived in São Paulo, in the western region (more specific, in the Butantã district). Never had been to any of the violent Zona Leste (eastern zone) districts, except those closer to the center like Tatuapé. I was once in a very dangerous district in the extreme south, but only because I took a wrong bridge when crossing the Pinheiros river.

If you ask people who lived there their whole lives, chances are their story will be similar. Most of the time they spend in their neighbourhood and adjacent districts. I am not saying this is good. This kind of social segregation is bad in the long term. However, I am just stating a fact: You will not need to cross dangerous districts frequently, unless you live close to one.

2nd – The Violence is decreasing in São Paulo. Everywhere.

It is a difficult task to define the reasons behind endemic violence in a country like Brazil. It is equally difficult to list the reasons behind sharp falls or rises in the criminality across extended periods.

I am not going to do that here, but just state a fact:

Violence is falling in most states of Brazil consistently for already some years. In São Paulo state this delinquency reduction is even sharper.

Homicide Rate in São Paulo
Homicide rate in São Paulo. Source: São Paulo State Government

In 2001, the homicide rate of São Paulo was 33.3 per 100 000 people. Less than two decades later, this number felt to 6.42.

To put this into perspective, in 2001 São Paulo had a murder rate similar to Mexico. Now it is just a little above the USA.

Criminality in São Paulo
Criminal statics of the ABC region (Metropolitan Region of São Paulo). Source: Public Security Secretary of São Paulo.

The fall in criminality is not only about homicides, but in other crimes as well. It is also not restricted only to specific regions, but widespread. The chart above is about the ABC region, metropolitan cities of the São Paulo conurbation. Even though it is in Portuguese, you can see crimes like latrocínio (robbery + murder) decreasing 58% in the first semester of 2019 compared to the previous year.

3rd – There are ways to dodge most of the risks.

While there is not a 100% efficient system to avoid thieves and other crooks, most of the paulistanos (people from São Paulo) already mastered the daily habits to not become a victim.

More details on this you can see in one of the chapters of my book Budget Travelers, Digital Nomads & Expats: The Ultimate Guide: 50 Tips, Tricks, Hacks and Ways. You can also check this article I wrote for Medium about some of those tricks.

Things like not expose cell phones in the central region, not use expensive photographic machines publicly, or have a dummy wallet. A common accessory of people in the Sé region (a place ridden by pickpocketers) is the pochete (sort of a money belt). It makes you look fat, but is great to keep your documents and cards safe.

Conclusion: Is São Paulo Safe?

Going against the common belief that everywhere in Brazil is dangerous, I would answer the question Is São Paulo Safe? With yes, it is.

It is safer compared to most regions in Brazil, and even in Latin America. It is also relatively safe if you live in half of the districts and do not wander in the other half. But the best news is: São Paulo is getting safer year after year, continuously, during decades already.

Author: Levi Borba, founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy, former RM specialist for the world´s greatest airline,  co-founder of Nearby Airport Hostel Warsaw and author of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity. You can check some of his articles here.

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Australia and New Zealand corridor Current Affairs

When travel restrictions will be lifted.

The New Normal: Connectivity Bubbles

Connectivity Bubbles for When travel restrictions will be lifted.

An increasing number of countries see a light in the end of this dark tunnel of the last months. With the gradual control (at least partially) of the Covid19 pandemic by few nations, governments start to announce measures for when travel restrictions will be lifted.

This article is the refined version of a Linkedin post I wrote that made repercussion there. The post itself came after conversations with other entrepreneurs, colleagues from my former career at the headquarters of the world’s greatest airline, as well as acquaintances in the political/public life.

We came to an interesting scenario for the next 2 years about the international travel market.

International movement will come back.

However, not in the same way as before, but in the form of connectivity bubbles.

Countries in more advanced stages of controlling the epidemic (like Poland, where I live) will reopen gradually to others that achieved the same conditions.

What is “control” of the pandemic?

By controlling the pandemic we understand not only a reduced number of victims, but also a reduced reproductive rate. This rate is also known as R0, if no measures are taken, or Re in a controlled scenario. In epidemiology, R0 is understood as the expected number of new cases directly generated by one contaminated person. Therefore, if in each infectious individual  transmit the disease to other 2, the R0 in this place is 2. This reproductive rate will vary across regions depending on factors like demographic concentration, social distancing or isolation of suspected patients.

There are plenty of material about epidemiology. If you are interested, it is worth to check them for a deeper knowledge since this is not my area, which is International Travel. Now, back to our previously mentioned concept of connectivity bubbles between countries that achieved a desirable level of virus control.

Where are the possible bubbles?

                Some of those bubbles, where we expect that people movement will gradually resume by mid 2020 are:

  • Australia <-> New Zealand. The Australian prime-minister Scott Morrison in April gave signals during a press conference of a possible reconnection with New Zealand. His counter-part in New Zealand, Jacinta Arden, made similar statements. Thoughts go as far as including some pacific nations in this bubble, since few were not much affected by Covid19.
Australia and New Zealand corridor
Both the prime-minister of Australia and New Zealand already outlined the possibility of a travel-corridor between them.
  • V4 (Czech Republic <-> Hungary <-> Poland <-> Slovakia). The group of Visegrad, also known as V4, had a remarkably quick response to the pandemic in its initial phase. Poland and Slovakia closed their borders before having a single fatal victim. Nowadays, all of them are among the least affected countries in Europe. Some members are discussing to reopen their land borders to each other already by July.
Poland, Czech, Slovakia and Hungary compared to Sweden regarding Coronavirus
Comparison between V4 countries (Poland, Czech, Slovakia and Hungary) and Sweden regarding Coronavirus victims. Souce: Ourworldindata.com
  • Greece <-> Cyprus <-> Israel.  Greece is among the countries that most successfully reduced the speed of the Coronavirus epidemic in Europe. Unfortunately, they are also among the most affected economically, given the fact tourism is responsible to near 25% of their total GDP.  Similar situation happens in Cyprus. To relief this burden, both nations plus Israel are negotiating a travel-corridor. This would ease the crisis in the tourism sector by allowing movement between those countries.

The losing side

On the other hand, countries like Mexico and Brazil will be for a long time barred from most of the international travel market, due to numbers still quickly rising. In fact, harsher restrictions are implemented in the US-Mexican border. Meanwhile the government of Florida Ron DeSantis recently submitted plans to the American president restrict travel from Brazil.

Personal digression: this would mean thousands of expatriates, like me, restricted from visiting our families at least until 2021.

In Europe, the always-trendy Balearic islands are considering imposing a travel ban for UK visitors for the whole summer. As the tourist minister Iago Negueruela explained to local media:

There are countries like the United Kingdom that have taken too long to adopt containment measures and that also puts us in a different situation with respect to them.

Balearic Islands to ban UK travelers
The balearic islands may impose a summer-long ban for UK travelers.
Photo: Cala Macarella, Minorca.

From a macro point of view, this should be (relatively) good news for the tourism industry in some places. Examples like Colombia, which will partially absorb the demand previously belonging to Mexico and Brazil, or Greece, able to boast the badge of a safe destination for the whole planet.

Thoughts?


Author: Levi Borba, founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy, former RM specialist of the world´s greatest airline,  co-founder of Nearby Airport Hostel Warsaw. Author of the books Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity and Budget Travelers, Digital Nomads & Expats: The Ultimate Guide

Book cover
Receive for FREE! Digital Book - 20 Essential Hacks for Saving Money While TravellingLearn the one single trick to pay almost 60% less in your airline tickets!

Subscribe to our blog and receive for FREE in your e-mail the digital book that will teach you the way to cheaper flight tickets and even an upgrade to Business Class! Written by an author that worked during years in some of the best airlines of the planet.

John
Smith
johnsmith@example.com

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