Desenho urbano sensível à água: análise para aplicação de estratégias em áreas urbanas consolidadas

Abstract

The replacement of natural land cover by the increasing occupation of the urban environment contributes to the alteration of the water cycle, which in turn contributes to the reinforcement of climate change and the recurrence of events, sometimes tragic, related to floods and landslides. Such changes can lead to serious disorders and immediate socioeconomic damages to cities, whose spaces are not designed to mitigate such effects or to resist its consequences. In this context, the concept of Water Sensitive Urban Design has been developed seeking to integrate the management of the water cycle in the cities to the process of urban development. However, the public power, for reasons related, mainly, to political time and budget limits, does not meet the needs of the city in this regard. On the other hand, the citizen can be an important agent of transformation, especially if it is technically oriented and accompanied. Therefore, the objective of this work is to provide a tool that can collaborate with the process of improving the quality of life in consolidated urban areas, formal or informal, that suffer from the consequences of changes in the natural water cycle, identifying measures of Water Sensitive Urban Design that do not require a great financial contribution and can be implemented by the citizens themselves, with examples in mechanisms and strategies already applied by the world. Thus, starting from a theoretical approach, the contents of the Water Sensitive Urban Design Technical Manual for the Greater Adelaide Region, Australia, were explored, selected for consistency of their information and the relevance that the country assumed on an international scale in the treatment of this theme, establishing criteria of analysis that allow to conclude, among other things, if the measures of Water Sensitive Urban Design attend to the problematization proposed in this work, whose result is expressed in analytical framework representative of such relations. However, it is considered that the primary purpose of a systematization such as that intended is related to environmental awareness and appropriation of the public space. Finally, it is suggested, for future works, the production of technical material to support the implementation of strategies of Water Sensitive Urban Design.