Place-Conscious Education for Disaster Prevention in Risk-Prone Areas of Sao Paulo

Abstract

This paper outlines the importance of the use of place-conscious pedagogy in non formal education courses developed to prevent accidents and disasters in hydrological at-risk areas. In the city of Sao Paulo, according to the Risk Area Mapping made by the “Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnologicas—IPT” (Technological Research Institute) together with Sao Paulo’s City Hall, Sao Paulo has many at-risk areas, but the major part of them are in the city’s suburb areas. With the intention of working with non structural measures, the City Hall of Sao Paulo offered, during 2012 and 2013, some non formal education courses for inhabitants, technicians, and people concerned with the subject. The courses were given in many places in the city with three different focuses: “Risk Perception”, “Urban and Environmental Risk: a Prevention Approach” and “Capacity for Mapping at-Risk Areas”. Those courses used the place-conscious pedagogy by presenting the physical and social problems of the local environment, and, also, through the intention of creating in the local inhabitants attitudes that could contribute in a social and environmental mode to the community where they live. The place-conscious’ notion is an important instrument to be used in those kinds of courses. Only with an enlarge knowledge of the place where they live, those at-risk area inhabitants can integrate and participate of public politics helping to chose decisions which can contribute to decrease the inhabitants vulnerability.