Stage 5 Changing Places

Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, which provides one third of the countries GPD, is now running low or water due to one of the worst droughts in 8 years. There are more than 21 million people in this city and 13 million of them are facing water outages. If it doesn't rain soon, the city could face a collapse. The city has blamed the drought of lack of water in the vapor clouds that the amazon usually provides to the city. They also blame it on deforestation and global warming. President Dilma Rousseff has questioned the cities misusage of their water supply, claiming that the city mismanaged their water supply.  

This shows just how important water is the human race. It also shows how humans have no sense of urgency in conserving water until it's too late. The saying "you never know a good thing until it's gone" applies in this case. The Brazilian government did not take any sufficient measures to conserve water until it realized how depleted the reservoir is. This event demonstrates the environmental impact of  water depletion on humans, and how humans have such a huge impact on the geographical landscape on Earth. As seen in the picture above, many greens turned yellow as a result of the lowering water levels. The river beds are soon going to be overgrown by shrubbery as water no longer exists there. These are all results of a combination of natural (lack of rain) and human causes of resource depletion.

water

These images of the favelas are both breathtaking and heartbreaking. Breathtaking in the sense that these aerial images show the scale of the entire neighborhood. You begin to get an appreciation for how large these favelas actually are. The amount of people living in this area is remarkable. The image is also extremely heartbreaking. I can only imagine the everyday problems and issue that the residents of these slums face. In the nations so called festive city, I see little reason for these people to celebrate. These are the forgotten people of the brazilin economic boom. They are the ones who the government would not like anyone to know about. Sadness and aw some up my reaction to this photo.

This is an incredible favela village in South America. It shows how densely the population of slums are and how they are built up on the hillside. Most favelas are built on the side if the hills which are the most unstable portions because they can't afford to have a better place in the valley and away from the mudslide and avalanche areas. Great depiction of the slums.

And again in Brazil

http://civitasinclusive.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/paraisopolis-brazil-by-tuca-vieira-2004/

The pictures show the deep divide between rich and poor in Mexico. These settlements are built to the point where luxurious condos share a wall with decaying slum housing. The roads do not connect the areas, showing how these places were constructed separately by to distinctly different communities. While the proximity between sections shows that sights, sounds, and smells most likely carry across the two sections, the rich area looks as if it has no idea what lies directly beyond their walls. The fact that the rich areas are literally walled off from the rest of the surrounding area says a lot about the deep economic divides found around the world today.

Right away from looking at this picture, you can tell which side is which. I didn't even have to read the article yet to find out where the wealthier people lived and where the not so wealthy lived. The colors stood out the most to me. In the picture on the left, it is clear that this is the not so wealthy part in Mexico. The color is just filled with dark and gloominess, mostly shown in gray. The houses are also pushed very closely together. On the right side, it appears that this is the richer side of Mexico. Although the houses are closer together like the picture on the left, they are colorful. They have firm built roofs and appear to be built and taken care of much better. Something else that gives you the sense of which community is more rich is the cars. There is a whole line of cars in the right picture while in the left picture we see a few here and there. The right picture also illustrates lawns. We slightly see some grass in the left, but it is clearly not as well taken care of as the lawns in the right picture. This picture was done as an advertisement to draw attention to the gap between the two different communities. The campaign goes by the name "Erase the Differences" and hopes to get people to realize the differences in poverty that are right in front of them.