The Power of Representations: The Trame Verte et Bleue and the Metropolitan Region of the Paraíba Valley and North Coast in São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

The Metropolis Statute strengthened the need for a territorial approach to planning. This project presents the possibilities of the Trame Verte et Bleue (TVA) in the context of the metropolitan planning in Brazil. The Metropolitan Region of the Paraíba Valley and North Coast (RM Vale), in São Paulo, was the area chosen for the study. There are 39 municipalities immersed in an Atlantic Forest matrix, with diversity in their plants physiognomy, associated with a plethora of historical and geographical occupation processes, and enveloped, in some way, by the great Paraíba do Sul Basin. This new planning scale demands new forms of governance and, with it, new ways of representation. This project proposes qualitative and quantitative methodologies, with the use of remote detecting and spatial and demographic analysis to establish the Metropolitan TVA representations in the form of Power Cartographies that creates visibility regimes for alternatives to the current planning that is excluding and with a strong spatial selectivity. The first stage of the project consists of the building of a conceptual matrix that defines the representation elements for the Power Cartographies related to the RM Vale. The second stage designs and implements a geographic database, the BDG-Vale, integrating elements of the physical landscape, the social landscape and the historically built movements and flows in the region. The BDG-Vale allows the identification and characterization of Metropolitan Landscape Units - UPM as places of power. The third stage establishes the metropolitan space from its (i) socio-territorial dimension; (ii) its institutional dimension, and to its (iii) dimension related to movements and flows. These dimensions support the construction of cartographies that observe and reveal connections and relationships that provides alternative narratives for the disputed territories