Roberta  FONTAN GALVÃO

Abstract:

The Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (MRSP), formed by 39 municipalities that includes the state capital – Sao Paulo –, constitutes a territory of high urban density, sheltering extremely complex economic and urban structures that extrapolate this region with dynamics that occur at different scales – local, regional, national and global. The MRSP growing conurbation movement reaches in certain areas municipalities beyond its own limits. The extreme urbanization of this territory has, over the years, caused great damage to its natural reserves – watershed areas and remains of the Atlantic forest. This urbanization has also, if not wholly suppressed, at least greatly displaced the frontier of its rural lands. In an attempt to change the course of this expansion, a  movement driven precisely by the need to protect forest remnants with greater rigor, brought recent changes to the Strategic Master Plan of São Paulo city (PDE-2016), which delimited the Rural Area to about 25% of the territory of the municipality, and whose goal is “to contain the horizontal expansion of the city and protect what is left of the green belt, besides creating jobs and income with activities that guarantee the preservation of the environment, such as organic agriculture and ecotourism.” In line with the PDE-2016, the zoning law of the municipality (Law number 16.402, 22/03/2016) foresees the creation of Zones of Preservation and Sustainable Development of Rural Areas? (ZPDS) which are “portions of the territory intended for the conservation of the landscape and the implementation of economic activities compatible with the maintenance and recovery of the environmental services provided by them, in particular those related to the productive chains of agriculture, mineral extraction and tourism, with low demographic and constructive densities (…) “.

This presentation will disclose the outcomes of the doctoral research “The urban, the rural and the periurban: São Paulo urbanization in a (macro-) metropolitan context” about the “rural areas” identified in the SPMR. This research highlighted the availability of infrastructure in terms of mobility and living conditions for the population occupying these areas, as well as, the economic relations established with the metropolis from the activities of production and distribution of food in small properties located in the metropolitan fringes of São Paulo. It is based on data from the Demographic Census (2000 and 2010), and the Agricultural Census (1996 and 2006) carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), and indicators on the production and distribution of agricultural products from the Institute of Agricultural Economics (IEA). We seek to identify a correspondence between the recent areas marked as Rural Areas in the São Paulo municipality by the PDE-2016, the so-called “rural” areas in this municipality and in neighboring municipalities that develop activities in food production and their relation with the natural areas of the region. Through this approach, we hope to contribute with elements to be incorporated in the discussion about the adoption of effective instruments of incentive and support to the permanence and development of activities related to food production as alternative solutions? in terms of housing, occupation and subsistence for the metropolitan population.

Roberta Fontan is a Doctoral student in the Environmental Science Graduate Program at the University of São Paulo (Procam/USP/Capes), master’s in Architecture and Urbanism at University of São Paulo (FAU/USP-Capes), geoprocessing specialist at University of Campinas-Unicamp, Architect and Urbanist at Federal University of Pernambuco, research assistant at the Metropolis Laboratory (Lume/FAU/USP).