Strategic analysis of topography and urban land planning: Structuring environmental compartments in macro-metropolis of São Paulo

Abstract

The great urban spreading occurred in metropolitan areas worldwide, still in intense movement of urban expansion on old rural areas, evidenced that the environmental problems, which most affect the territories nowadays, are the result of intensive urbanization processes. In this sense, the decision about where and how to occupy a territorial area must pass through a different analysis on the topography, not anymore as just as static and passive element, which conforms to the several urban uses requested for a strategic approach linked to the urban territorial and environmental planning. By highlighting the main lines and environmental structuring compartments of a landscape under the topographic aspect and the processes of its geomorphologic form, it is possible to better glimpse the relationships urban processes and imposed infrastructures establish with these strategic landscape portions, which allow to define ways of use and land occupancy more suitable to urban and natural processes, aiming the selection of the main topographic sectors designated to environmental services for preservation of spaces of natural processes occurrence.