This issue of Urbe features articles from different regions of Brazil and authors based in Chile and Colombia. The articles discuss issues ranging from transport and urban mobility to urban planning and management training in South America, from the national plan for urban solid waste to the proliferation of club-condominiums across the country. This variety of articles shows the broad diversity of themes in urban studies, and how the problems reported in these papers are part of the routine of studies in urban management.
Urban mobility is the theme of the first three articles. Scattered and fragmented urbanization patterns have become common in hundreds of Brazilian cities, affecting not only the big cities, but also the medium-sized ones. Taking the metropolitan region of Natal as their case study, especially its south axis, Ricardo Ojima, Felipe Ferreira Monteiro and Tiago Carlos Lima do Nascimento discuss this phenomenon with particular attention to urban mobility.
In São Carlos and Rio Claro, medium-sized cities in the state of São Paulo, Patrícia Baldini de Medeiros Garcia and Archimedes Azevedo Raia Jr. study the patterns of accessibility to major local hospitals. Geo-referenced analysis is used as the main method, where authors compare the modes of transportation used for medical care and accessibility according to socioeconomic groups. They show, in one case, a constant theme in studies of mobility: the modal distribution related to socioeconomic classes.
Rounding out the group of articles focused on urban mobility, taking as a case study the city of Santiago, Chile, Cristhian Figueroa Martínez and Natan Waintrub Santibáñez propose an approach that could prompt similar research in Brazil: gender and mobility. The authors show interest in analyzing how women are affected and have their activities limited by the availability of transport, being specially vulnerable and limited by place of residence and provision of urban mobility services.
The article by Sibila Corral de Arêa Leão Honda, Marcela do Carmo Vieira, Mayara Pissutti Albano and Yeda Ruiz Maria initiates the second set of themes of this issue of Urbe: environment and the city. In this article, the authors discuss the relationship between the use and occupation of land, production of social housing, and environmental planning. In a study conducted in Presidente Prudente, Sao Paulo state, the authors note that precisely these dwellings, financed by the government, disregard laws at different governmental spheres and ignore minimum social and environmental standards.
The Gunnar Vingren municipal ecological park in Belém is the object of the study by Silvia Laura Costa Cardoso, Mário Vasconcellos Sobrinho and Ana Maria de Albuquerque Vasconcellos. In this article, the authors analyze the factors that facilitate and hinder the implementation of urban parks, and show how community participation, patterns of urban settlement on the surrounding areas of the park, as well as forms of urban management, influence the implementation and maintenance of urban parks.
Cristina Maria Dacach Fernandez Marchi discusses an issue still pending resolution in most Brazilian cities: the disposal of solid waste. With reference to the procedures that are part of the National Plan for Solid Waste Policy, and analyzing multiple cases, the author presents a model for the installation and management of equipment for disposal of solid waste.
Again, taking the city of Natal as a case study, Felipe Fernandes de Araújo discusses the recent proliferation of club-condominiums as a form of urban land occupation. With special attention to the expansion of this type of development in the south axis of the Metropolitan Region of Natal, we recommend reading this article in parallel with Ricardo Ojima, Felipe Monteiro and Tiago do Nascimento’s paper on patterns of fragmented growth in this region of Natal. Based on the theoretical discussion about capitalist production of urban space, Felipe de Araujo sees club-condominiums as “the ratification of the existing urban cleavage process in the city”, which certainly occurs in all regions of Brazil.
After a decade of its implementation, the City Statute of Brazil still generates research interest that seeks analysis from different perspectives. Following this approach, Jefferson O. Goulart, Eliana T. Terci and Estevam V. Otero discuss public participation in the preparation of master plans in the cities of Rio Claro, São Paulo, Bauru and Piracicaba.
This issue of Urbe closes with an article of particular interest to the Journal: Claudia Inés Carreño and Armando Durán Durán present a comparative study on the teaching and training of urban management in Brazil and Colombia. Combining documentary analysis and in-depth interviews with graduate students and lecturers, the authors see a common growth in the interest in urban management and show the challenge of combining scientific research with concrete actions in the planning and management of cities - a concern that, even if not declared as so, lines up all the articles in this issue.
Rodrigo Firmino, Harry Alberto Bollmannand and Fábio Duarte
PPGTU/PUCPR,
Curitiba, January 2015.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Apr 2015
