The city of the future: London or Sao Paulo?

Last week I chaired a Financial Times conference in London, flew to Sao Paulo and did the same there.

Our subject in both was the "millennial generation", those aged between 18 and 30.

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As the picture alongside this column reveals, I am not in this age bracket, but the conferences prompted the question: if I were starting my career now, would I prefer to do it in the UK capital or Latin America's most powerful city?

For ease on the eye, you would surely choose London. Sao Paulo has some greenery, but nothing to compare with London's parks. While some of London's suburbs have a brick-and-slate dreariness, Sao Paulo's vast stretch of high rises surely appeals only to the most ardent architectural modernists.

Road journeys in both cities are unpredictable. I was told to leave at least an hour for a five-mile taxi ride in Sao Paulo. It took 11 minutes, but that was at 7am. One of our mid-morning conference speakers found himself snarled.

The clatter of helicopters, both morning and evening in Sao Paulo (at one point I counted eight immediately overhead), suggests many of the wealthy prefer not to leave these trips to chance.

London is safer. My Sao Paulo hotel receptionist told me to remove my watch before I went out, unless it was a cheap piece of plastic. (I rolled up my sleeves to show would-be assailants that I don't own any sort of watch.)

The statistics say such caution is justified. London had 1.6 murders per 100,000 people in 2009, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Sao Paulo had 10.8 - although the homicide rate in both cities has almost halved since 2003.

In cultural offerings, London's advantage is overwhelming, but it has had centuries longer to accumulate its riches. Greater Sao Paulo has a population of 19m. As Larry Rohter, the veteran New York Times correspondent, points out in his book Brazil on the Rise, in 1870 its population was 31,000. There is some exciting new Brazilian art and the Sao Paulo Museum of Art has a fine collection.

The weather: no contest. It was warmer and sunnier last week at the start of Sao Paulo's winter than during London's fitful summer.

What is it like to be young and ambitious in the two cities? Both conferences heard from entrepreneurs and community activists, as well as from policy specialists. The young Brazilians were notably more downbeat than their London counterparts. Bia Granja, co-creator of youPIX, "the largest internet culture festival in Brazil", complained about the lack of tolerance in the country, saying: "I've never seen so much prejudice in my life."

This pointed to a startling difference between the two conferences: in spite of Sao Paulo's rich racial mix, every speaker and almost every conference delegate was white. The same is true in the city's upmarket neighbourhoods and restaurants.

This is not to oversell the UK capital's tolerance: shortly after our conference there, an Islamic centre was burnt down in the wake of a soldier being hacked to death in the city's streets.

But the London panels and the delegates were more varied and optimistic. They were more mobile too, including Bobby Kensah, a UK-trained lawyer with an award for his pro bono work, who now lives in Hong Kong, and Rokhaya Diallo, a French anti-racism campaigner who popped over for the day. Ms Diallo was worried about how her English would hold up. It was fine.

The Sao Paulo conference began in English, but most of the Brazilian speakers switched to Portuguese. There is nothing wrong with this: why shouldn't they speak their own language in their own country? The few foreigners present had simultaneous translation headsets.

The problem is that Portuguese is, as one of the Brazilian panellists said, spoken "only in Macau and some places in Africa" (she seemed to disregard Portugal). It is striking how few people in Sao Paulo, even in luxury hotels and shops, speak any other language, and how few foreign publications are on its newsstands.

Even though Brazil's growth has slowed, its rich natural and agricultural resources suggest it has brighter prospects than the UK. In manufacturing, Brazil, unlike Britain, makes complete civil aircraft. That is perhaps why its citizens feel less need to look further afield. Sao Paulo talks about Brazil. London talks about the world.