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In A Brazilian Capital, There Is A Tiny Neighborhood With Only Five Residents And A Food Van That Drives The Lives Of Those Who Pass By.
In some Brazilian capitals, the contrast between giant and tiny neighborhoods reveals curiosities about how cities are organized. The smallest neighborhood in Brazil raises many curiosities.
In Belo Horizonte, for example, while Buritis, in the West region, houses over 42 thousand people, other neighborhoods have populations so small that they could fit around a single bar table.
A Neighborhood With Only Five Residents
São Damião, located in the Venda Nova region, is officially the smallest neighborhood in Belo Horizonte, and perhaps the smallest neighborhood in Brazil.
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According to the 2022 Census by IBGE, it has only five inhabitants. Despite its tiny size, the place hosts a small business that has become a meeting point in the area: the food van of merchant Eliseu Vieira.
He says that the movement does not come from the few neighbors, but from drivers and delivery riders who pass through the road that connects three municipalities — Santa Luzia, Vespasiano, and the capital itself. “Despite being small, it has a good flow. I have customers from several cities. So there’s that advantage,” he reported.
To attract the public, Eliseu created unusual promotions. “If I need customers from outside, I need to make them stop. The option I found that is working well is a promotion where you buy sugarcane juice with pastry and can have unlimited juice. They leave satisfied and come back,” he explained.
The Day-To-Day Of Those Who Live There
Ester Vieira, Eliseu’s daughter and a student, helps her father daily. She says that life in the neighborhood is unpredictable. “Sometimes it’s empty and then suddenly a lot of people show up. Most of the people we’ve already served once or twice. There’s a lot of interaction, and we notice the differences in each person,” she said.
Growth And Lack Of Structure
Residents claim that São Damião is growing and that the number of inhabitants may have already quadrupled, reaching around 20 people. Still, they complain about the lack of basic services, such as garbage collection and public lighting.
Military firefighter André Luiz Ferreira de Lima, a resident of the area, summarizes the paradox: “We are in a strategic point, near the airport and the Administrative City, but we still lack simple things.”
In the same capital, the Bacurau neighborhood also stands out: it has only three streets and an alley — a curious portrait of the urban diversity of Belo Horizonte.
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