Barueri

The neighbourhood’s story

Barueri began as an indigenous settlement 26 km from Praça da Sé. Official historiography puts its founding in 1610, with Father João de Almeida; tradition attributes the founding to November 1560 and to José de Anchieta. The settlement grew quickly and became one of the most important indigenous settlements of colonial Brazil, resisting, alongside the Jesuits, the attacks of the bandeirantes who came down the Tietê to capture indigenous people. It was governed by the São Paulo City Council from 1560 to 1809 and, afterwards, as a parish and district, by the council of Santana de Parnaíbai — the relationship that explains everything that followed.

The railway shifted the axis. Construction of the Sorocabana Railway began in 1870 and the first stretch opened in 1875: Barueri gained a station and became a freight hub, an obligatory route between São Paulo, Santana de Parnaíba and Pirapora do Bom Jesus. When Light built the dam on the Tietê, in 1900, the equipment passed through Barueri — and for that purpose Rua Duque de Caxias was opened, avoiding the Campos Sales slope. A police district in 1917, a peace district in 1918, its first industry in 1936 (the Frigorífico Pisani), the town outgrew the sleepy Parnaíba that administered it. The independence movement won: the municipality of Barueri was created by Lei 233, de 24 de dezembro de 1948, signed into law by Adhemar de Barros, with municipal government installed on 26 March 1949 and its own judicial district from 8 December 1964.

The second turning point has both a date and a law number: in 1973, the City Council approved the Industrial Zoning Law, and it was this that opened the way for the Tamboréi and Alphavillei hubs, along with Jubran Votupoca and Jardim Califórnia. That same year, engineers Yojiro Takaoka and Renato de Albuquerque bought five hundred hectares of the Fazenda Tamboré and began designing Brazil’s first large-scale planned neighbourhood. Today Alphaville is the municipality’s main source of revenue; the municipality covers 65.70 km², has around 316,000 inhabitants and a density of 4,816 inhabitants per km² — the third most populous city in the Osasco micro-region, and twice the population of the municipality that once governed it. The territory is divided between the seat and the districts of Aldeia, Jardim Belval and Jardim Silveira.

The half of Alphavillei and Tamboréi that falls within Barueri is the closer of the two to the capital, and was also the first to be subdivided. The perimeters have been closed since the twentieth century; no new residential development opens up, and what changes hands is a plot within a layout that has already been fully divided.

Barueri: a Jesuit settlement from 1560 that was a district of Parnaíba, became independent in 1948 and grew to twice the size of its neighbour. Half of Alphaville and half of Tamboré belong here — the half closer to São Paulo.

The surrounding area

• Clubs: the Alphaville Tênis Clube, from 1976, is the region’s historic meeting point and sits on this side of the boundary; besides it, each residential development maintains its own clubhouse, with clay courts, a pitch, a running track and sports facilities within the walls. Add to that Arena Barueri, opened in 2007 by the city government, which brought top-flight football to the municipality.
• Schools: the largest concentration of international schools in Greater São Paulo, shared with Santana de Parnaíbai and used indiscriminately by both sides — St. Nicholas, Escola Internacional de Alphaville, Escola Castanheiras, Pentágono, Anglo Leonardo da Vinci and Colégio Objetivoi; in higher education, the Alphaville campuses of Mackenzie and UNIP, and the Mackenzie school in Tamboréi.
• Dining and lifestyle: Iguatemi Alphavillei, opened in 2011 with more than two hundred stores and a cinema, and Shopping Tamboréi, an open-air concept, next door; around them, the commercial and business centre that concentrates dining, hospitality and services for the 200,000 people who pass through the region every day.
• Parks: the green here is internal — native forest preserved within the residential developments themselves and landscaped strips along the perimeters; outside the walls, the banks of the Tietê and the municipal sports facilities around the arena.

In the Fragata archive

There are 2 developments from the portfolio in the municipality: Tamboré 1i, on Avenida Ceci — 1.86 million m², 702 residential plots of 1,000 to 5,000 square metres, the first residential development that Tamboré SAi opened on the farm’s remaining tract in the late 1980s. It is the Barueri side that counts here: of the two Tamborés in the collection, this is the one closer to the capital, five minutes from the Rodovia Castello Brancoi and half an hour from downtown São Paulo. Its sibling, Tamboré 2i, sits on the other side of the boundary, in Santana de Parnaíbai — and Alphavillei has one foot in each municipality.