If New York can do it, so could Sao Paolo: kill the noise and pollution, and create an urban recreation facility.
A disused freight rail line in New York was transformed into a wonderful urban park, a mile-long snake-shaped facility for the people to relax, jog and stroll in, renamed the High-Line. The resource now accommodates "210 species of trees, shrubs and grasses selected for their native relevance and hardiness" according to The Guardian.
Now the Big Worm, a ghastly creation in Sao Paolo which the Washington Post reports is a "2.2-mile-long elevated highway that wiggles through the center of South America’s largest city, bringing 80,000 cars and grating noise to a wide swath of cityscape, must be flattened if the sprawling metropolis is to modernize, urban planners say."
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had considered tearing down the freight line back in 1999. He must be embarrassed not to have had the personal foresight to envisage the benefits such a transformation could deliver.
The same might be said to Sao Paolo metropolitan administrators today: save and revitalise it - a Big Worm Park could herald a city renewal of which they'd be justly proud.
In New York, the High-Line reinvented itself with "an investment of just US$115m to convert the rusty tracks of the railway into an elegant walkway" reported The Guardian, which continued "the city authorities have attracted an estimated US$2bn in private money to the neighbourhood." The enterprising and increasingly wealthy Brazilians might think to do likewise. Sao Paolo residents would undoubtedly thank them if they did.
Don't just eradicate a blight on the cityscape, leave a legacy.
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