São Sebastião is one of the municipalities located on the northeast coast of São Paulo, Brazil. The surface relief in this region is formed by the Serra do Mar, a system of mountain ranges and the current vegetation is the... [ view full abstract ]
São Sebastião is one of the municipalities located on the northeast coast of São Paulo, Brazil. The surface relief in this region is formed by the Serra do Mar, a system of mountain ranges and the current vegetation is the Atlantic rainforest, where an endemic ecosystem can be found. Part of the territory belongs to an environmental protection zone called Serra do Mar State Park, which is the largest continuous reserve of Atlantic rainforest in the country. Inside the protection zone, constructions are forbidden by law in order to preserve nature and due to the risk of landslide from the mountains, which is recurrent in summer when heavy rains are more frequent. Informal housing has become common in those risk areas. The high real estate prices found in sites closer to the beach made them unaffordable to locals, for this reason, luxury condominiums were built for vacation homes, where most of the perennial inhabitants carry out their economic activities as service providers.
This problematic background demands an urban intervention whose guidelines take into account the environmental issues and social inclusion of residents. São Paulo’s state government has been responsible for the program Sustainable Development Project of the São Paulo’s Coast since 2007, which intents the regional development in municipalities along the coast to provide better living conditions for the entire population in a balanced way with the environment. Thereby, the families residing in the risk areas will be removed and reallocated to social housing units. The Companhia de Desenvolvimento Habitacional e Urbano (CDHU) is the public body that promotes the construction of social housing at the state level, including this case.
The aim of the present paper is to evaluate the relation between the current urban public interventions in São Sebastião and the actual sustainable development of this municipality. The method used combines the analysis of primary and secondary data. The primary data were collected and observed in visits made on September 19th and October 20th, 2015 to the community including the irregular settlement called Vila Sahy, whose part is within a risk area. The secondary data are publicly provided by official Brazilian institutions, such as the urban diagnosis accomplished by the Pólis Institute, the socioeconomic censuses promoted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and theoretical references on the subject.
A Regional Agenda for Sustainable Development was developed by the program. The main guidelines involve resettlement, provision of infrastructure and sanitation, as well as recovery, conservation and enforcement actions for environmental protection. The CDHU foresees commercial and institutional use in social housing projects to relocate the inhabitants. The mixed use instigates the emergence of new urban centralities, which consequently weakens the fact that the local population depends economically on the summer houses. Therefore, the interventions have the potential to leverage the sustainable urban development of São Sebastião.
Keywords: risk areas, social housing, sustainable development
