Urban climate, climatic risk and socio-spatial vulnerability mediated by the production of urban space in São Paulo cities (São Carlos, Marília and Presidente Prudente)

Author(s)

Camila Riboli Rampazzo

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Presidente Prudente. 2019-06-19.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia. Presidente Prudente
• Defense date: 2019-04-10
• Advisor: João Lima Sant'Anna Neto

Abstract

The research was based on a geographic approach associated with the urban climate, based on the Urban Climate System (SCU) and the production of geographic space, subsidized by the analytical perspective of Climate Geography. In the face of the accumulation of environmental costs as a consequence of the transformations resulting from the accelerated and concentrated process of urbanization and urban growth, aggressive changes in the conditions of the natural environment, what are the threats, natural and /or caused by human action. Among these impacts, the urban climate is effectively a phenomenon resulting from this summation process, since it greatly modifies the interrelationship rhythm in the surface-atmosphere system (SSA). The city of São Carlos, Marília and Presidente Prudente, as a territorial and research cut, aimed to identify how the urban climate constitutes a particular atmosphere in places with different levels of socio-spatial vulnerability and risks. The main hypothesis of this thesis was that the different levels of criticality and exposure to the risks identified are applicable to the different degrees of technification employed in these different territories, that is, that the urban climate becomes relative and selective. The objective was to relate the configuration of urban climates from the generation of urban heat islands (ICU) to the historical dimension of production of these spaces. Seeking to identify, for this, the spatial context of these cities mentioned above; where the hazard is produced and its relativity of exposure to climatic threats and their levels of vulnerability and their unequal and selective nature and socio-spatial differentiations of each context of production of these urban spaces. In this sense, the impacts of the urban heat islands were not only understood as an element of nature, but incorporated into the city as an expression of the form and content of the urban phenomenon. As the cities, these impacts were understood as a social production. The research was developed by the following specific objectives: analysis of the geoenvironmental and urban structure of the cities; identification of urban climates from thermodynamic surface events (thermal satellite images and NDVI) and atmospheric via geostatistical modeling; elaboration of vulnerability index to natural disasters (SoVI®); dimension of the influence of climate and the historical dynamics of the production of spaces in vulnerability and its risks; qualification of the nature of the impacts according to the exposure to the risks, the places of occurrence and which are the vulnerable populations. The results indicate not only the existence of urban climates, but that, from the modeling of the urban heat islands, with an intensity higher than 4°C under stable atmospheric conditions, there is a correspondence between the levels of vulnerability and the unequally constructed spaces in the configuration of the urban climatic impacts in each of the cities urban climate. The three cities present these characteristics, specifically qualified and at different levels, however, according to each urbanization process, urban morphology, geoenvironmental conditioning, structure of inequality, factors and levels of socio-spatial vulnerability, these characteristics promote the relativity of exposure to impacts, given the selectivity in the socio-spatial dynamics, mediated by the mode of appropriation of the historically engendered nature. Situations that are often aggravated or repeated in the face of risky situations in environmentally susceptible areas, due to the inadequacy of homes, constructive precariousness and the quality of the built environment. Thus, based on these assumptions, it will be considered possible to address the theoretical impasses of this given problem to the challenges of practice at the level of the constraints; which will come to mediate as instruments of socio-spatial differentiation, inequality, socio-spatial vulnerability and urban climate configuration as a social construction. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/15444-7 - Climatic hazards and socio vulnerability: the production of urban space as an indicator of (un) thermal comfort in tropical cities (São Carlos, Marília and Presidente Prudente)
• Grantee: Camila Riboli Rampazzo
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate