Roberta FONTAN
Abstract:
The pattern of physical expansion of the urbanization in main metropolitan cities in Brazil has provoked/resulted in several urban and environmental problems that affect its population and its territories. During the last decades, many of these issues have been intimately linked to the human dwelling occupation over natural areas whose environmental relevance cannot be overseen (GROSTEIN, 2001). The protected environmental areas which are mainly represented by: forests and sources of water supply in São Paulo, Curitiba, and Belo Horizonte metropolitan areas; dunes and lagoons in Natal and Fortaleza metropolitan areas; igarapés in Belém do Pará metropolitan area; cerrado in Brasília; and mountains and margins of rivers and streams in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo metropolitan areas. The "peripheral pattern of urbanization already widely discussed by several scholars in Brazil persists in the metropolitan areas mentioned here.
On one hand, the urban, social and environmental problems arising from this pattern of urbanization must be identified and regarded as a whole equated to ensure the preservation of areas that respond to the larger interests of the metropolitan population. On the other hand, these urbanizing areas have served as a source of income and of productive activities on a set of scales have been transformed into rural, touristic, and leisure activity areas.
This paper discusses the diversity of natural areas that exist within the Brazilian metropolitan contexts. We seek to present how the urbanization process has impacted the varied natural environments in Brazil, and indicate the most relevant issues of the debate concerning the transformation of rural areas into inter-metropolitan areas, as seen in the Paulista case. Finally, the present study considers some important aspects that should be further developed in order to allow a better articulation between the two mentioned aspects of this relationship.
Considering the Brazilian natural, rural, and urban areas as a whole, this approach seeks elements to comprehend the complex opposition/integration system of the Paulista Macrometropolitan Region (known as Macrometrópole Paulista or MMP) on São Paulo State, through the observation and analysis of the urban sprawl evolution, protected natural areas, and productive activities of some Paulista municipalities.
Dr. Roberta Fontan is an architect and urbanist, with PhD in Environmental Science and Master’s in Architecture and Urbanism, both at University of São Paulo (USP, financed with a scholarship from Ministry of Education CAPES Program). She has an experience as a geoprocessing specialist at University of Campinas-UNICAMP, with a bachelor in architecture and urbanism from the Federal University of Pernambuco and a bachelor in Computer Science at the Catholic University of Pernambuco. She used to be, since 2009, a research assistant at the Metropolis Laboratory at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at University of São Paulo Lume/FAU/USP), and investigated about rural areas of Sao Paulo metropolitan and macro-metropolitan context. She is currently a short-term visiting assistant professor in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University. Her actual research is concerned with the urban expansion and rural area transformation in Kyoto and Osaka metropolitan areas since the 1950s.