A São Paulo Resident Turned a Degraded Riverbank Into the City's First Linear Park

Twenty years ago the banks of the Tiquatira stream in São Paulo's East Zone were an abandoned lawn that collected rubbish and had almost no trees. Today the same land is the Tiquatira Linear Park: 320,000 square metres of Atlantic Forest vegetation and one of the most important green corridors in the region.

200 seedlings, destroyed twice

The change began with one resident. In the early 2000s Hélio Silva walked through the area every day on his way to work and watched it degrade further — waste was piling up and the spot had become a place for drug use. In November 2003 he bought 200 seedlings of plants native to the Atlantic Forest with his own money, hoping they would turn the area into an oasis within ten years. A local businessman who used the space as a car park, fearing the trees would hurt his trade, destroyed all of them. Silva bought twice as many saplings and planted them in the same place; those were destroyed too. He kept planting. As word spread about the area's new residents, the population began to support the project, and the seedlings finally took root.

São Paulo's first linear park

In 2007 São Paulo City Hall turned the area into the Tiquatira Linear Park — the city's first linear park and an inspiration for the ones that followed. Today it holds 32,000 trees from 160 species, among them jacarandas, jequitibás, pitangueiras, palms and jatobás, forming an urban forest for East Zone residents. Visitors also find sports courts, walking and skateboarding tracks, children's playgrounds and kiosks selling drinks and snacks.

How to visit

The park is on Avenida Governador Carvalho Pinto in Vila São Geraldo. A cycle lane runs around it on Sundays and public holidays, from 7am to 4pm. The nearest metro station, Vila Matilde, is two kilometres away, and bus routes serving the park can be checked on the SPTrans website.