Why is São Paulo seemingly a non-event outside of Brazil?

[galleyfox]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Milan gets a decent number of tourists, but in the context of Italy (and to some degree beyond) it often has the same type of rep that people on here are saying that Sao Paulo has.

At least Milan is an easy drive from dozens of popular tourist sites.

Imagine a Chinese tourist from Shanghai. Do they go to Milan which is a 15 hour flight with easy access to Venice, Genoa, Monaco, ect.? Or Sao Paulo which is a 30+ hour trip with connections with a 6 hour drive to Rio?

São Paolo better be the literal El Dorado with streets paved with gold to warrant a visit from most people.

Fine modernist city with nice shopping doesn’t cut it when most continents have their own version of that.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Quixote

How is London any more scattered than NYC or Paris when the latter's respective commercial cores cover a significantly greater geographic area?

London's mostly 1-2-lane wide streets, pedestrian-only corridors, and alleys along with the more human-scale, small-footprint buildings results in there being more to see, do, buy, eat, or drink within Mayfair, Marylebone, Fitzrovia, Soho, St. James, Covent Garden, and Westminster. Collectively, this area is smaller than Midtown Manhattan.

The reason why London may feel more "scattered" is because it's more sparse, intimate, and low-key.

Scattered to me means something like what you wrote in the last sentence. It is less dense and a person generally has to travel farther between major points of interest than they would in Manhattan.

London is great and I'm not trying to detract from it, but you will cover a much more diverse cross section of neighborhoods, attractions, points of interest, bars, restaurants, hotels, homes, etc., in a 1-mile radius of most points in Manhattan than a comparable radius in London. This might be something more perceptible to me because I'm attuned to Manhattan level density. On the grand spectrum of urbanity, London is obviously one of the greatest urban places in the world.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Milan gets a decent number of tourists, but in the context of Italy (and to some degree beyond) it often has the same type of rep that people on here are saying that Sao Paulo has.

Right, I'm not aware of Milan as some global tourist crossroads. It's often disparaged, or just considered a stopoff near the Lake District. View the cathedral and The Last Supper, and then off to more interesting places.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

London is great and I'm not trying to detract from it, but you will cover a much more diverse cross section of neighborhoods, attractions, points of interest, bars, restaurants, hotels, homes, etc., in a 1-mile radius of most points in Manhattan than a comparable radius in London. This might be something more perceptible to me because I'm attuned to Manhattan level density. On the grand spectrum of urbanity, London is obviously one of the greatest urban places in the world.

London is just a lot less dense than NYC or Paris or Barcelona. It isn't an apartment town. There's just less stuff per km, a function of less dense built form. And London is a bit more like an older Tokyo, in that it feels like a bunch of medieval villages grew together, while NYC and Paris feel more like the historic city grew outwards from a more unified core.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Not saying Toronto is particularly like SP, but yeah, some of the reasoning for why both cities arguably aren't globally perceived as some believe they should be perceived seems to overlap.

Leisure tourists generally don't care about diversity, or tall buildings, or growth. What does that have to do with tourism? They want iconic attractions, unique neighborhoods, memorable local foods, atmosphere, traditions, etc. "We have lots of malls and buildings and we're richer than other cities" isn't gonna draw 'em in. Tourists prefer New Orleans to Dallas. Similarly, I can't think of anything unique to SP.

I'm not even sure that SP is all that diverse, at least by global standards. Excepting some economic migration from places like Venezuela, has Brazil had large-scale immigration in the last 50 years? Early 20th century, sure, but the immigrant communities have to be getting pretty long in the tooth by now. I believe the great Italian migration to South America ended before WW2. Japanese migration, too, largely ended before WW2. So the number of foreign born non-South Americans has to be tiny at this point. Don't believe there are large Jewish, Muslim or Hindu communities, either.

I would assume Jewish people are a visible minority in SP? Not New York level visible, obviously, but similar to Rio and Buenos Aires? I've definitely seen yamulkes in the wild in both Rio and BsAs.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I would assume Jewish people are a visible minority in SP? Not New York level visible, obviously, but similar to Rio and Buenos Aires? I've definitely seen yamulkes in the wild in both Rio and BsAs.

There are 70,000 Jewish in SP, but they’re not visible minority. Except for the orthodox (that are growing fast), you cannot distinguish them from other White people.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Not saying Toronto is particularly like SP, but yeah, some of the reasoning for why both cities arguably aren't globally perceived as some believe they should be perceived seems to overlap.

Leisure tourists generally don't care about diversity, or tall buildings, or growth. What does that have to do with tourism? They want iconic attractions, unique neighborhoods, memorable local foods, atmosphere, traditions, etc. "We have lots of malls and buildings and we're richer than other cities" isn't gonna draw 'em in. Tourists prefer New Orleans to Dallas. Similarly, I can't think of anything unique to SP.

I'm not even sure that SP is all that diverse, at least by global standards. Excepting some economic migration from places like Venezuela, has Brazil had large-scale immigration in the last 50 years? Early 20th century, sure, but the immigrant communities have to be getting pretty long in the tooth by now. I believe the great Italian migration to South America ended before WW2. Japanese migration, too, largely ended before WW2. So the number of foreign born non-South Americans has to be tiny at this point. Don't believe there are large Jewish, Muslim or Hindu communities, either.

There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners in SP: Koreans, Chinese, Bolivians, Haitians, Africans (specially French speaking), Arabs. It’s not like London where you hear more foreign languages than English, but the city is by far the most cosmopolitan in Latin America.

And of course, the city was formed by waves of Italians, Japanese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Lebanese, Germans, Eastern Europeans and all those communities keep their tradition as much as they do in the US.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Scattered to me means something like what you wrote in the last sentence. It is less dense and a person generally has to travel farther between major points of interest than they would in Manhattan.

London is great and I'm not trying to detract from it, but you will cover a much more diverse cross section of neighborhoods, attractions, points of interest, bars, restaurants, hotels, homes, etc., in a 1-mile radius of most points in Manhattan than a comparable radius in London. This might be something more perceptible to me because I'm attuned to Manhattan level density. On the grand spectrum of urbanity, London is obviously one of the greatest urban places in the world.

London architecture and street layout is way more diverse than NY, with its endless and dull grid.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Toasty Joe

Not really? And that doesn't necessarily make it attractive to tourists... modernist buildings aren't exactly notorious for drawing in the masses

We get it, you're really proud of your city, but it's becoming counterproductive to the discussion for people who are actually curious. Addressing the topic, it seems there are some clear reasons why it's not as major of an international tourist destination or even as widely acknowledged (at least in North America) as Rio, including overall bland architecture and limited cultural exports.

Rio is NOT a major tourist hub. Neither Brazil. Your whole point is mute. Bland architecture? Are you talking about North America with uninventive corporate towers and endless parking lots and mediocre suburbs?

If Brazil followed Japan steps and all the sudden became a tourist powerhouse, SP would get loads of foreign tourists as much as it gets domestic ones (more than Rio, btw).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Rio is NOT a major tourist hub. Neither Brazil. Your whole point is mute. Bland architecture? Are you talking about North America with uninventive corporate towers and endless parking lots and mediocre suburbs?

This is absurd. Rio is clearly a major tourist hub and it's hard to take you seriously when you say that it is not. Tourism is one of the largest segments of Rio's local economy.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

This is absurd. Rio is clearly a major tourist hub and it's hard to take you seriously when you say that it is not. Tourism is one of the largest segments of Rio's local economy.

I hear people saying they are going to Rio or would like to go to Rio fairly regularly up here.

I know a number of people who have been.

[Crawford]

I've never heard of someone who visited Brazil for leisure purposes without visiting Rio. It's like going to France for the first time, and skipping out on Paris. Doesn't typically happen. In most cases, it seems Rio is the point of the trip.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Yuri

There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners in SP: Koreans, Chinese, Bolivians, Haitians, Africans (specially French speaking), Arabs. It’s not like London where you hear more foreign languages than English, but the city is by far the most cosmopolitan in Latin America.

And of course, the city was formed by waves of Italians, Japanese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Lebanese, Germans, Eastern Europeans and all those communities keep their tradition as much as they do in the US.

Yeah, certainly Sao Paulo is the Latin American or South American New York.

In terms of contemporary immigration trends which have a lot of South Asian and non-Japanese East Asian people front and centre, then sure if that's what a person is looking at then it seems like Sao Paulo is "missing out" right now.

But it's still a very diverse city. Much more than most people would expect.

I actually find the "diverse South American/Brazilian city of immigrants" to be a pretty interesting aspect of Sao Paulo, as it's not something most people would intuitively expect outside of anglosphere metropolises.

I remember the first time I went to Paris (early 1990s) and was fascinated to run into people of all origins (including from India, China, etc.) who seemed to be seamlessly integrated as "French".

Even in Canada in spite of our English-French duality we didn't really have that back then and these types of people here in Canada all became "anglos". (Though things have changed somewhat in Montreal and Quebec since then.)

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I hear people saying they are going to Rio or would like to go to Rio fairly regularly up here.

I know a number of people who have been.

This street is lined with hotels and vacation rentals for as far as the eye can see: https://goo.gl/maps/Q9ufc5fLcWVxNV9Y8

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I remember the first time I went to Paris (early 1990s) and was fascinated to run into people of all origins (including from India, China, etc.) who seemed to be seamlessly integrated as "French".

I got that impression the first time I went to Paris too, which was one of my first trips abroad in my early twenties. I was thinking about how the city was teeming with foreign faces and accents, but they were from places that you didn't see around Toronto: Senegal, Morocco, Haiti, etc, and so the immigrant experience and resulting hybrid culture that would form there would necessarily be very different from what it would be back home.

It's not the primary reason to see Paris, even after repeat visits, but it's like a good "B side" to a single.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

This is absurd. Rio is clearly a major tourist hub and it's hard to take you seriously when you say that it is not. Tourism is one of the largest segments of Rio's local economy.

Brazil only gets 5 million tourists a year. 1 million of those are Argentines that go mostly to Santa Catarina coast. Brazil it’s like the 30th or so on the numbers of international tourists.

If you’re ridiculing SP for not appealling to foreign tourists (those demi-gods according to SSP), Rio is not in a good position either. People might think it’s a major tourism hub. But they just think. They don’t take a plane and actually go there.

Originally Posted by Crawford

I've never heard of someone who visited Brazil for leisure purposes without visiting Rio. It's like going to France for the first time, and skipping out on Paris. Doesn't typically happen. In most cases, it seems Rio is the point of the trip.

But that’s the thing: people don’t go to Rio or Brazil.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yeah, certainly Sao Paulo is the Latin American or South American New York.

In terms of contemporary immigration trends which have a lot of South Asian and non-Japanese East Asian people front and centre, then sure if that's what a person is looking at then it seems like Sao Paulo is "missing out" right now.

But it's still a very diverse city. Much more than most people would expect.

I actually find the "diverse South American/Brazilian city of immigrants" to be a pretty interesting aspect of Sao Paulo, as it's not something most people would intuitively expect outside of anglosphere metropolises.

I remember the first time I went to Paris (early 1990s) and was fascinated to run into people of all origins (including from India, China, etc.) who seemed to be seamlessly integrated as "French".

Even in Canada in spite of our English-French duality we didn't really have that back then and these types of people here in Canada all became "anglos". (Though things have changed somewhat in Montreal and Quebec since then.)

Yes, I was thinking about that too. European faces, specially in places where immigration started earlier and slowed down (France), you see those French of all races and not only the original Gauls.

Just by looking to people’s faces in SP, their surnames, it’s clearly one a very very diverse city. London and Toronto didn’t get those loads of immigrants till recently. The US also had a period of close doors too.

It’s not written anywhere that a city is only interesting if it was invaded by millions of immigrants in the 2000’s.

And you have a good point: precisely because foreigners know so little about Brazil and São Paulo, that it might be a good surprise. A silly example: the average Italian New Yorker have no idea São Paulo is a much bigger Italian city that NY.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Brazil only gets 5 million tourists a year. 1 million of those are Argentines that go mostly to Santa Catarina coast. Brazil it’s like the 30th or so on the numbers of international tourists.

If you’re ridiculing SP for not appealling to foreign tourists (those demi-gods according to SSP), Rio is not in a good position either. People might think it’s a major tourism hub. But they just think. They don’t take a plane and actually go there.

I'm fairly certain that either Rio or Buenos Aires are normally the most visited cities in South America.

[Yuri]

From Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings

Brazil ranks on 6th in Americas, below the US, Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Dominican Rep. Just a bit above Chile, Peru, Cuba and Colombia (and thanks to Argentinian beach goers).

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I'm fairly certain that either Rio or Buenos Aires are normally the most visited cities in South America.

If you count domestic tourists, SP is ahead both. And given Brazil is half of South America and Brazilians are major tourists anywhere in the world, there’s no reason to not count Brazilian tourists traveling domestically.

[iheartthed]

According to Statista, Rio is 3rd most visited city for international tourists in South America, slightly behind Buenos Aires and Lima: https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-cities-latam/

Cancún is the most visited place in Latin America, which is obviously driven by Americans going to resorts. I've never been to Lima, so I'm not sure who is going there. I know it's a entry point for people going to Machu Picchu, but other than that I don't usually hear much about foreigners going there.