Urban Space and National Identity in Early Twentieth Century São Paulo, Brazil Crafting Modernity

“Mehrtens’s sources are richly varied and used with
great insight and creativity. Her analysis is detailed, careful, and
illuminating. She has written a book that will appeal to scholars of the middle
class, of public-private interactions, and of the complex process of the
development modern urban space.” (Anne Hanley, Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 52
(2), December, 2015)

"In Urban Space and National Identity in Early Twentieth Century São Paulo, Brazil, Cristina Peixoto-Mehrtens - historian, architect, and former urban planner - has written a vital book. She details the complex interactions among policy makers, bureaucrats, politicians, and scholars who defined the economic, cultural, social, and political spaces of urban São Paulo, Brazil s twentieth-century economic power house. Deftly exploring the labyrinths of state and private development agencies and drawing on an eclectic array of sources, Peixoto-Mehrtens offers fresh insight into Brazil s economic and social modernization in the twentieth century. Her tale of the construction of the Pacaembu Stadium during the late 1930s is a model microhistory of tangled social and political agendas. At the same time, she offers a new chapter in the deepening account of the role Brazil s middle class played in articulating modernity to a nation that in the early twenty-first century has become a rising global power. Recognizing that there was no unified middle-class political initiative, she penetratingly shows how bureaucrats and policy makers, acting from local conditions, interpreted and transformed the transnational traffic in theories of development and urban planning." - Brian P. Owensby, Professor and Chair, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia

"How did middle-class architects and city planners, municipal employees and foreign-owned companies, politicians and intellectuals all contribute to reshaping the urban spaces in São Paulo, South America s largest city, in the 1930s and 40s? Urban Space and National Identity in Early Twentieth Century São Paulo, Brazil offers a fresh interpretation of the crucial role that middle sectors played in influencing urban life in a vital center of modernizing Brazil. Through the creative use of a wide array of archives, oral histories, and varied sources, this social and cultural history artfully analyzes the complex interlocking networks of business interests, aspiring professionals, and middle-class technicians that planned and implemented the transformation of the city into Brazil s largest metropolis." - James N. Green, Professor of Brazilian History and Culture, Brown University