I knew Sao Paulo in a time in which it was much smaller.
It was spontaneously and organically divided into neighborhoods, and lacked that separation between rich and poor neighborhoods, which seems so anti-natural to me.
The homes of those more wealthy [grande senhor], those of the lower bourgeois and of the manual workers existed fraternally side by side, forming a kind of little city within the city, where support and assistance was given from the top to the bottom, from family to family, within the social scale.
There was such a hierarchical and proportional intimacy among the families, that one could say that the neighborhood was truly a large family.
The neighborhood’s strength of attraction was so great that when the lady of a household went into the city, it was a small expedition.
