Towards an Urban-Rural-Environmental Relationship in the Metropolis: The case of Vila Bela

Abstract

This paper presents principles, methods and results of a Final Graduation Work in which teaching, research and university extension are considered as an indivisible whole. This method is been realized though several years, where our choice of territory intervention constantly consists of look for locations on extreme edges of Sao Paulo’s metropolitan peripheral regions, with deep social fragility, contiguous to rural places and environmental preservation areas and impacted by the existence of at least one large metropolitan infrastructure. The search for alternative pacts in urban-rural-environmental relations begins with the understanding that these systems are inseparable and complementary. The experiment of sustainable development models in the field of higher education encompasses urban guidelines, territorial plans in diverse scales and architectural projects compromised with the site. All the work’s phases are articulated to commitments with the actual territory and its inhabitants, seeking to break through perverse conditions of the centre-periphery binomial and for new possibilities in the urban-rural-environmental relations in the metropolis. The work essays new paradigms in the relation between man-man and man-nature, assuming as urgent the environmental imbalance situation and the planetary social inequality, whose need for proposition is imperative and irreversible – regarding landscape, public spaces, habitat’s quality of life and infrastructure supply. The engagement is inseparable, constituting bonds of realizable commitments. The approach to the field is established through meetings and alignment with the community leaders and representatives, building close ties. The results of learning experience are the final research products, guidelines, an urban design of an exemplar cut and architecture projects realized, which are carried out under the guidance of this article’s authors, that are presented as a collection of alternatives to the region’s demands and priorities, and the complementary extra-disciplinary actions that are also established on voluntary bases, according to the emergences or wishes expressed.