Challenges of the urban peripheral landscapes Desafios das paisagens periféricas urbanas (original) (raw)
Related papers
Challenges of the urban peripheral landscapes
urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana, 2015
The peripheral regions of Sao Paulo reveal a profound contradiction in their landscapes-on the one hand, remnants of their original biophysical basis and, on the other, increasing pressure for the territory's occupation. The northwest sector of the periphery, for example, presents environmentally sensitive areas which are at the same time under great pressure for occupation by those who do so by choice (the property market) and those who have none (irregular and high-risk occupation). The poor inhabitants of these regions have increasingly organized themselves to achieve basic rights through community associations, social movements, and cultural groups ever since the recent re-democratization process in Brazil. It is precisely in these urban spaces, which are precarious in many ways, that significant subjectivities have emerged in participatory processes, expressing an awareness of environmental issues with an implicit desire for more humanized landscapes. These processes often include children and their teachers as protagonists. For thirteen years, the Landscape, Art and Culture Laboratory (LABPARC) of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU) at USP has been working with educators and children from municipal public schools, developing projects, research, and university extension work in the region. This article aims to discuss this experience with the objective of showing the gains achieved and the challenges that may arise within the perspective of a collective construction of the city, where urban interventions can be harmonized with water sources, streams, steep slopes, forests, and fauna.
Sao Paulo peri-urban dynamics: some social causes and environmental consequences
Environment and Urbanization, 2007
This paper shows that the demographic growth of São Paulo's Metropolitan Area is very uneven. While the centre of the city is losing population, its farthest suburbs are growing quite fast. Furthermore, those fast growth areas are the poorest of the metropolitan area, with less infrastructure than other areas within the region and high levels of deforestation and informal land use. The objective of this paper is two-fold: fi rst, it explains the reasons for these intraurban dynamics by showing that the city is losing population in exactly the places where real estate investments are growing most signifi cantly; second, it seeks to explore the environmental consequences of this pattern of urban sprawl -such as the occupation of environmentally protected areas -by presenting data on forest cover reduction. The approach is original in that it contrasts socioeconomic, demographic and environmental trends within the city of São Paulo according to the rate of population growth of each of the city's areas, instead of employing the more conventional comparison of municipalities.
Revista Sociedade Científica, 2019
This work aims to establish a parallel between the urban built landscape of São Luís historic center in Maranhão and the natural environment in which it was inserted. It will seek to analyze the landscape's natural system, the cultural heritage built and the interaction between those elements. During the study, the topography will be emphasized as one of the elements responsible for São Luís historical Center urban network formation and further development and also for the configuration of its architecture which formed new typologies such as the Sobrados. It is also discussed the infrastructure works relevance that sought to overcome the natural terrain constraints, essential for the functioning of a city whose economy was based on port trade. As a consequence of the city growth, the natural factors imposed the creation of solutions that would support the historical urban fabric expansion such as the bridges over the Anil River and the landfill and the dam over Bacanga River, elements that were once limiting the urban configuration of the city of São Luís.
Landscape History Urbanising rainforests: emergent socioecologies in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Recently included on the UNESCO World Heritage list, the urban forests of Rio de Janeiro are one of the most thorough expressions of the more-than-human character of the so-called ‘cultural landscapes’. Far from pristine nature, Rio’s forests are plant communities that developed on land previously used for agriculture, energy and water supply, and human habitation, among other purposes. Traces of such activities can still be seen in every corner of these forests, currently protected areas. Some of the human marks are very conspicuous and can be noticed by anyone: water tanks, stairways, arches, banana plantations, and the like. But some other traces are so organically integrated in the landscape that only a trained eye can discern them; for example, whole sections of forest dominated by jackfruit, an Asian species, and small plateaus carved into the hillside with a strangely blackened soil. In this article, we investigate the origins of these two kinds of landscape features. Based on primary written sources and iconography, in addition to the relevant historiography, this work of historical reconstruction reveals an inextricable interpenetration between socio-economic and cultural processes — such as cash crop expansion and urban sprawl — on the one hand and bio-ecological processes — such as secondary succession and ecosystem invasion — on the other. In fact, as we argue, both are part of the same moving life-world, a continuous web of more-than-human relationships that generates both city and forest. This socionatural dialectic is responsible for Rio de Janeiro currently being a city full of forests which, if carefully inspected, reveal themselves full of urban history.
Urbanising rainforests: emergent socioecologies in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Landscape History, 2016
Recently included on the UNESCO World Heritage list, the urban forests of Rio de Janeiro are one of the most thorough expressions of the more-than-human character of the so-called 'cultural landscapes'. Far from pristine nature, Rio's forests are plant communities that developed on land previously used for agriculture, energy and water supply, and human habitation, among other purposes. Traces of such activities can still be seen in every corner of these forests, currently protected areas. Some of the human marks are very conspicuous and can be noticed by anyone: water tanks, stairways, arches, banana plantations, and the like. But some other traces are so organically integrated in the landscape that only a trained eye can discern them; for example, whole sections of forest dominated by jackfruit, an Asian species, and small plateaus carved into the hillside with a strangely blackened soil. In this article, we investigate the origins of these two kinds of landscape features. Based on primary written sources and iconography, in addition to the relevant historiography, this work of historical reconstruction reveals an inextricable interpenetration between socioeconomic and cultural processes-such as cash crop expansion and urban sprawl-on the one hand and bio-ecological processes-such as secondary succession and ecosystem invasion-on the other. In fact, as we argue, both are part of the same moving life-world, a continuous web of more-than-human relationships that generates both city and forest. This socionatural dialectic is responsible for Rio de Janeiro currently being a city full of forests which, if carefully inspected, reveal themselves full of urban history.
Environmental Conflicts at São Paulo Macrometropolis: Paranapiacaba and São Sebastião
Ambiente & Sociedade
The objective of this paper is to analyze two cases of environmental conflicts in the region of Macrometropolis Paulista related to territorial development on the installation of large logistics enterprises, seeing how they fit into the logic of planning and vision of the state as well as the reactions of civil society to impacts that such projects bring with them. In Latin America, the urbanization process from the second half of the twentieth century produced the formation of large cities such as São Paulo, Mexico City and Santiago, for example. From the 2000s, a new urban phenomenon has received attention of planners and researchers: the urban territorial expansion of the metropolis and the formation of this territory as a city-region. The question here is how this metropolitan expansion is related to natural resources and the tensions inherent in the contemporary production process space.
Cultivating the City: Infrastructures of abundance in urban Brazil
Future of Food Journal on Food Agriculture and Society, 2015
Urban agriculture, if it is to become integrated into the city, needs landscape architectural thinking in order to be woven into the larger urban fabric. Thinking at the scale of ecosystems running through a city creates a framework for spatial change; thinking in assemblages of stakeholders and actors creates a framework for social investment and development. These overlapping frameworks are informed and perhaps even defined by the emergent field of landscape democracy. Cultivating the City is a prospective design project seeking to embody landscape democratic principles. The intention is to reclaim the meaning of landscape as the relationship between people and place, both shaping each other. The design in question is a proposed network of urban agriculture typologies in Porto Alegre, Brazil. These hypothetical designs, emphasizing agroforestry with native species, serve as a basis for dialogue between potential stakeholders and as catalysts for future projects. This landscape architecture project sets out to be a mediator in processes of spatial evolution in order to envision just and sustain-able urban landscapes.
Urban trees in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo: A study of Geodesign and ecosystem services
Applications of Remote Sensing [Working Title]
The Metropolitan Region of São Paulo has been presenting a scenario of high urbanization, with an increase of impermeable surfaces and verticalization to the detriment of green areas, especially urban afforestation. These scenarios contribute to the extremes of temperature and the presence of urban heat islands, especially in the more densely populated and built-up areas, where the temperature is higher than the surrounding areas that have vegetation, especially urban forestation, promoting ecosystem services such as temperature cooling. Thus, this work aimed to use Geographical Information Systems and Geodesign framework with the use of the GISColab platform, in order to study urban afforestation, as an urban forest in the study area and with specific examples, aiming at the city’s socio-environmental quality. Thus, the work aims to seek nature-based solutions, such as increasing urban afforestation, in order to promote socio-environmental quality for MRSP.
The LINK Landscape Architecture and Ecology Doctoral Degree Program, a partnership between three universities (Lisbon’s Técnica and the universities of Oporto and Coimbra), was launched in 2009 with Lisbon hosting its first year before Coimbra took over in 2010 under the direction of Helena Freitas with Oporto running the 2011-2012 academic year supervised by Teresa Andresen. Sixteen doctorate holding professors form the program’s educational core combining to ensure the highest standards in landscape architecture and urban ecology research. The international scope of the LINK teaching program and its staff reflects our intention to endow the program with a global reach, with English as the common language, while nurturing its roots in Southern Europe. As from 2008, the contribution made by by Professor Carl Steinitz, a researcher and Professor at Harvard University throughout four decades, towards launching and running the program has underpinned the doctoral program’s approach to theoretical and practical teaching in the fields of landscape planning and design.
The dialectic of nature in the production of space at Praia do Saco, south coast of Alagoas/Brazil
2020
This article aimed to investigate the social and environmental impacts caused by the increase of real estate projects and to analyze the relationship between society and nature in the Praia do Saco space in the city of Marechal Deodoro-Alagoas/Brazil. In the space on the coastal area of Alagoas is noted an increase of real estate ventures in protected areas, where the access to the beach becomes private, the communities are displaced, and the nature is destroyed and replaced by allotments and gated communities. In this sense, we developed a theoretical discussion about the production of space and the dialectic of nature. It was also necessary to make a specific analysis of produced space in Praia do Saco, identifying the vectors of overflowing from the capital Maceió to the South Coast of Alagoas, socio-spatial actions, agents and transformations, as well as irregularities and socio-environmental impacts in order to investigate critically the contemporary dynamics of this space. Field visits were made for observation and analysis of the area in question, to take photographs and conduct interviews. Thus, it was found that this process of real estate increase in the southern coast of the Metropolitan Region of Maceió has reproduced the accumulation by dispossession, because real estate developers appropriate areas, generating, directly or indirectly, a displacement of traditional communities. Besides these actions are causing a strong social and environmental impact in the area by the irregular exploitation of the soil.