The rural identities of the São Paulo macrometropolis

Abstract

The São Paulo Macrometropolis (SPMM) is socially constructed from mostly urban relations, but approximately 72% of its territory is classified as rural. Although there is a lot of coherence in the understanding of the macrometropolitan fact as a process of urban complexity, looking up only at the urban functional relations, generalizing and assuming the territory as homogeneous, might be inaccurate. There is a demand in territorial planning for researches that understand and consider the different natures of the territory; if only the urban relations are considered, there is a large portion of this space that might be being neglected. Issues such as food security, water security, adaptation to climate change and, more broadly, the need to achieve sustainable patterns of spatial production, are not limited to the understanding of urban relations. This project will use a methodology developed on the RUFUS Project that focuses on developing a new typology to show the diversity of rural regions, applying it to the SPMM could help the targeting of projects in the macro and metropolitan scale. Another goal is to analyse the typologies created and set up a survey to help unveil the regional identity of these rural areas, in order to create a result where both quantitative data as well as qualitative data are considered. It is also expected that the reports following the BEPE and the Scientific Initiation in Brazil will be used as a base of discussion to enlighten the ruralities in the researches of all the 5 groups of the Thematic Project "Governança Ambiental da Macrometrópole Paulista face à variabilidade climática" (2015/03804-9), to which this research is linked. (AU)