City Map, Adresses & Metro Plan of São Paulo

The city of São Paulo encompasses about 20,000 streets. Only a few paulistanos know practically all of them. We can consider the drivers of myDriver São Paulo as part of these few. The benefit of this knowledge is that the drivers are able to find optimal alternative routes whenever the omni-present traffic congestions occurr.

The city splits into five zones, named after the geograpfic directions: Zona Central, Zona Sul, Zona Oeste, Zonal Norte, Zona Leste. Inside each zone, there are districts („bairros“), which are frequently used to describe the location e.g. of hotels. Some examples are Jardins, Itaim, Morumbi or Pinheiros.

The address format consists of street and number, CEP (Postal Code), city, state and country. Like on high-ways, the numbers indicate the distance from the beginning of the street and, unlike central Europe, are not sorted in a direct sequence of the houses. The postal codes have the format 12345-123. The city may be São Paulo or a city in the surrounding state of São Paulo. The state typically is São Paulo, the country Brazil. Inside the urban area of São Paulo, before the city you typically find the district ("bairro") - such as Jardins, Itaim, Morumbi or Pinheiros.

Metro Plan

In relation to it's size, the city of São Paulo has a very loose metro network consisting of only 5 lines, and totally without an airport link. It serves 63 stations, with an extension of only 70 kilometers. With it's long trains (almost 140 m) and relatively distant stations, it ressembles more a classical large urban train, such as the RER in Paris. It was inaugurated (only) in 1974. The use of the metro by day is typically - at least without luggage - safe, after dark even more caution is required.