Walking through São Paulo without seeing cars and trucks brings me an almost surreal happiness, imagining for a moment that the city actually worked, that Jane Jacobs's dream has come true. Simultaneously, another aesthetic sentiment inevitably emerges—a feeling of the "end of the world." This second impulse materializes as a constructive thought that has nothing to do with moral fatalism, let alone tragedy. It is simply the end of a world that the Industrial Revolution, alongside liberal capitalism, has "schooled" us to accept for two centuries. This was the world of infinite natural "resources," of the dream of endless energy abundance, and of voracious consumption desires. Dreams that were not even ours.
Every crisis is a major opportunity for reflection, questioning, and redefining paradigms. The "truckers' strike," in turn, offers fundamental lessons about the vulnerability of our cities and, on a larger scale, about the obsolescence of systems built on mechanical and anthropocentric paradigms.
Brazil has the highest concentration of road transport for cargo and passengers among the world's major economies. According to the National Transport Confederation (CNT), 90% of passengers and 60% of cargo moving across the country today are transported by highway.
