The urban area and natural areas of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo: from physiographic subdivisions to geographic categories

Abstract

This project proposes a study which aims to investigate the definition of the boundary between natural and urban landscapes, using the São Paulo Metropolitan Region and its surrounding natural landscapes as a case study. This definition is based on two procedures: the delineation and the limit analysis. For the first one, a technical and methodological basis covering the articulation of concepts relevant to cartography based on systemic assumptions will be used, in terms of matching attributes of environmental variables that compose the landscape units and the interactions of its properties, in order to produce clusters belonging to landscapes in the natural zone.Such limit will be obtained by detailed mapping of areas of natural landscapes to be chosen, located in the transition between the natural and urban zone. Through the identification of the environmental variable attribute that best represents the delineation of this limit in the detailed mapped areas, the same will be extrapolated and outlined for a regional analysis scale, when setting such attribute in the space to all the surrounding metropolitan region and its bordering areas (cartography of imprint structuralist).In analysis, through the attempt to understand the obtained limit, it will be proposed ways of land use intention, interpretation of the environment and intervention in the landscapes under particular theory, justifying geographical actions suggested by the study, whose goal is to articulate the advancement of the urban perimeter with the preservation of the natural zone situated in its surroundings. Such actions would be guided by certain forms of intervention in the landscape, which seek to control the evolution of its destruction, guided by principles inherent in the fact that the best-preserved natural landscapes must be protected.