Morfologia urbana e ambiente: um estudo exploratório sobre os efeitos da renaturalização na estrutura configuracional urbana.

Abstract

Cities have urban tissue patterns that assume various morphological configurations, producing different degrees of spatial integration and segregation. As the cities grow, places of environmental interest are strongly affected or even completely converted into urban spaces. In recent years planning guidelines have turned into a more rigorous definition of natural environment preservation criteria and the possibilities of re-naturalize urbanized areas. In order to bring two of the majoranxieties of today's society, the socio-spatial segregation and environmental degradation, the present exploratory study approaches the urban re-naturalization theme from the perspective of spatial configuration. The interventions on the urban spacethat try to improve the connectivity of the natural environment eventually produce changes in the urban configurational structure. These changes, on the other hand, tend to reduce the spatial integration, increasing the segregation in the urban tissue. Thegeneral goal of this study is to evaluate the degree of impact on the levels and patterns of socio-spatial segregation generated by re-naturalization projects. As methodology we used the urban modeling to simulate future scenarios and measures of spatial differentiation to assess the impact in the urban structure. Among the measures of spatial differentiation we selected accessibility and centrality. In parallel, natural systems are evaluated from their accessibility and number of cycles in search of a parameter to ponderate between the urban tissue efficiency and ecological network quality. The variations in the spatial segregation resulting of different criteria of re-naturalization are evidenced by comparing the simulated scenarios. Through statistical analysis of spatial differentiation measures distribution, of both the urban space and the ecological network, we demonstrate that if we submit the cities to re-naturalization projects, the losses of spatial quality of the urban tissue are small when compared to the advantages gained by the natural environment. Besides, these losses can be minimized with the use of intervention criteria based on morphological characteristics of the urban spatial system.