A Trip to São Paulo, Brazil
- Luna Oiwa
- Oct 5
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 8
Disclaimer: While I am currently employed by the US EPA, the views and opinions provided herein are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of EPA.
I had the privilege of visiting São Paulo, Brazil for a week and just came back. This was purely a vacation but given that few people in my circle have spent time in São Paulo, I want to share a bit about the city.
My April trip to Copenhagen has been inspiring me to reflect on sustainability beyond embodied carbon and reuse, and to think more broadly about how cities impact quality of life. So, from that perspective - what is São Paulo like?
First, I'm going to get some negatives out of the way - the wealth gap in São Paulo is very much visible through its homeless population and incidence of crime. Thefts are so commonplace that few people have their phones out in public. Another rather specific negative was the number of noxious-smelling construction sites I passed while walking around (I'm not sure why this specifically was a thing there).
That said, there is plenty to like about São Paulo – the lush greenery; the 100% electric public buses that started operating in the past year; the many large and colorful murals adorning building walls; the abundance of museums, many free of charge; the embracing of biogenic materials in trendy new cafes; the sign language interpreters that were part of nearly every museum video display for hard-of-hearing visitors and the touch exhibits for blind visitors; the open-air, natural ventilation of buildings like the Museu de Ipiranga; the frequent and reliable trains, and the ethnically diverse and welcoming locals who were always willing to work with my very basic Portuguese.
The trip also reminded me:
To keep an open mind for relevant projects. A friend of my Dad told me over dinner that she had recently founded a non-profit in Rio de Janeiro that teaches youth living in favelas to play basketball. She showed me a video of her volunteer crew gathering used materials to build basketball backboards and hoops, and lamented that she was still seeking funding for future projects. In other words, these were reuse projects running on volunteer labor… sounds familiar, given the many reuse-related volunteer efforts I have been part of back in the US. I am curious to know what happens next with the Rio project.
Of the role of art in storytelling science. One particular art piece I viewed at the Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP) described the devastation of the 2023-2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul through hand-written statistics and drawings. It was a marriage between hard numbers and abstract depictions of nature, and to me, an example of how art can help us make sense of the overwhelming amount of information we are exposed to every day. That, and and an example of how art helps us to preserve narratives beyond the limits of human memory— particularly important for long-term, large-scale stories like climate change.
That conversation is connection. A TED Talk I viewed in the past noted that even short-term, personal travel can be an act of international diplomacy. When dining with family and friends, concerns about unusual recent weather events (heavier-than-expected rainstorms and colder-than-usual temperatures in late September) came up more than once. It was a reminder that this is a global problem, and made me feel simultaneously sad and comforted.
At the end of the day, what matter most are people and community. Looking back at my week, every especially meaningful moment was meaningful because I shared it with others – my grandmother, uncle, and aunt, whom I saw for the first time in many years; the founder of the Bunkyo Origami Club whom I randomly met and folded a rose with; my dad's university friends who invited us over for a fabulous home-cooked dinner; and the amazing team behind the animated film My Grandfather is a Nihonjin that celebrated the movie's premiere on my last day in São Paulo.
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