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On Saturday 26th March a motorboat provided by the Empresa Metropolitana de Aguas e Energia spent the entire day shuttling back and forth across represa Billings, the large man-made water reservoir set in the lush nature reserve at the southernmost tip of the São Paolo Municipality. The boat moored continuously at the Cantinho do Céu pier to pick up and drop off the numerous people taking part in the third Jornada da Habitaçao organised by São Paulo Calling: international guests and São Paolo residents arriving from the city centre, as well as large numbers of inhabitants from the settlements which, like Cantinho do Céu, have developed along the banks of the Billings reservoir since the 1980s. An opportunity to try out a new and much quicker means of transport for connecting to the city centre: a kind of dress rehearsal for the new public water-transport system that the São Paolo local administration plans to develop.

Creating new transport connections across the Billings reservoir is the next stage of a bigger overall urbanisation project aimed at developing and improving the area with focus on creating a sustainable relationship between the neighbouring favelas and the reservoir. As well as creating infrastructure ...

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