Abstract
Free spaces are of great importance for cities—although they are often treated poorly by public and private agents—as spaces of daily life, as places of coexistence at the most diverse scales, as preferred loci of political manifestations and many other social practices. Free spaces are also the main elements capable of providing environmental services in urban areas. The public relevance of free spaces in Brazilian capitals, metropolis, and medium-sized cities is the theme discussed in this chapter. It presents a system of concepts that allow a better understanding of the theme and that may prove useful for the production of public policies seriously interested in improving the quality of urban spaces in Brazilian cities and metropolises in special, but is not limited to the reality of this country.
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- 1.
Among the most cited is always Richard Sennett. See Sennett (1977).
- 2.
In Portuguese, Rede Nacional de Pesquisa Quadro do Paisagismo—Sistema de Espaços Livres. The QUAPÁ-SEL National Network includes researchers from all the country’s macro-regions, representing 25 universities in total. QUAPÁ-SEL projects have already studied more than 60 cities. Among the most significant we can cite almost all the state capitals: Brasília, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Manaus, Belém, Goiânia, São Luís, Natal, Maceió, Vitória, Florianópolis, Campo Grande, Palmas, Rio Branco, and Macapá, as well as the metropolitan areas of Campinas, Santos, São José dos Campos, Sorocaba, Maringá and Campina Grande, and the medium-sized cities of Uberlândia, Ribeirão Preto, Uberaba, Santa Maria, Anápolis, São Carlos, and Criciúma.
- 3.
On June 20, 2013, alone, demonstrations were held in 388 Brazilian cities, including 22 state capitals. More than a million and a half people took to the streets to demand greater investment in public transportation (especially), health care and education.
- 4.
Here, it is important to distinguish between communication and information. To communicate means to ‘make common,’ to enable the establishment of communicative reason, a mutual understanding between subjects, and to presume dialogue rather than merely a relationship between a transmitter of information and a receiver.
- 5.
The Brazilian Civil Code of 2002 (Brazil 2002) identifies public assets as properties belonging to the federal government, federal states, and federal district, municipalities, autonomous bodies, and public foundations. Public assets are divided into three categories: (1) assets for common use of the population, intended to be used by the general public (streets, squares, beaches, etc.); (2) assets for special use, intended for the execution of public services (e.g., hospitals and public schools); and (3) unused publicly owned assets, or in other words properties without any established public purpose, constituting an available public asset capable of being sold off.
- 6.
In Brazil, watersides are identified as Permanent Preservation Areas (Áreas de Preservação Permanentes: APPs), which provides them with legal protection from intensive human use, including those areas located in urban environments. In practice, though, this legislation is widely ignored and illegal occupations are common. It would be better, therefore, for these areas to be effectively integrated into urban space, taking into account, of course, natural aspects, seasonal rainfall patterns, floods, the role of such areas in gene flows, and so on.
- 7.
‘Open spaces for public use’ is the expression used in Federal Law 6.766/79 (Brazil 1979) to designate all spaces intended for public interaction and leisure. In various municipalities, these spaces are commonly referred to as ‘leisure systems,’ a somewhat impoverished expression of what such spaces actually comprise. This terminology probably stems from the influence of modern functionalist urbanism and its reductive simplification of urban functions to dwelling, working, recreation, and circulation.
- 8.
Law 9.785/99 (Brazil 1999), which revised the federal legislation on land use, allowed municipalities to stipulate the percentages to be allocated to public spaces, a neoliberal decision typical of the federal government of the period. Fortunately, the culture created by the earlier Law 6.766/79 had already taken root and the 35% level was almost always maintained, or even increased, as in the São Paulo case where 40% has to be allocated to public spaces, including 15% to open spaces for public use.
- 9.
- 10.
In the city of São Paulo, in 2010, congestion reached daily levels of between 70 and 230 km. The average speed on the city’s expressways in these day-to-day situations of congestion is less than 10 km/h, much slower than traveling by bicycle (25 km/h). In the worst traffic jams, the average speed is equivalent to the pace of a chicken.
- 11.
It is worth pointing out that the ‘oldest’ and most famous ‘promenade’ in the country, the Copacabana Promenade (1970), designed by Roberto Burle Marx, does not fit the type cited above since the sidewalk is not used solely by pedestrians: In fact, it is very wide, running alongside an avenue parallel to the shore front—Avenida Atlântica—and includes various lanes for motor vehicles and a cycle lane implanted in the 1990s.
- 12.
In 2016, the country had two metropolitan regions with more than 12 million inhabitants (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) and eight metropolitan regions with a population between 3 and 6 million inhabitants: Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Brasília, Fortaleza, Salvador, Recife, Curitiba, and Campinas (IBGE 2016). Officially, the metropolitan areas that include municipalities from more than one federal state, like Brasília, are denominated ‘integrated economic development regions’ (regiões integradas de desenvolvimento econômico: RIDEs), while the others are called ‘metropolitan regions’ (regiões metropolitanas: RMs).
- 13.
Brazil (1965). Law 4.771 instituted the new Forest Code. Brasilia: Presidência da República. Casa Civil. Available at www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/L4771.htm. Accessed on March 17, 2012.
- 14.
- 15.
Findings reported at the QUAPÁ-SEL Research Workshop held in Maceió in 2008.
- 16.
The carriageway was reduced and its central reservation converted into linear park.
- 17.
Some prominent examples: Brasília on Sundays closes the Eixo Rodoviário (Road Axis), a route almost 14 km length known as the ‘Eixão,’ the most important avenue linking the North and South ‘wings’ of the city; in Rio de Janeiro the same occurs on Avenida Atlântica, the avenue running alongside one of the world’s most iconic urban beaches, Copacabana; in São Paulo each of the 39 district councils closes at least one main road on Sundays for leisure and social interaction, including the Avenida Paulista, perhaps the city’s most symbolic roadway, where São Paulo’s bank head offices and numerous industrial and commercial business organizations are located, along with cinemas, cultural centers, and the city’s leading art museum.
- 18.
Brazil. Law 9.985 (Brazil 2000) […] created the National System of Natural Conservation Units and Other Provisions. Brasilia: Presidência da República. Casa Civil. Available at www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/L9985.htm. Accessed 6 September 2011.
- 19.
Diadema is located in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region.
- 20.
It is worth recalling the principal criticisms of these housing programs: The eviction of families from fluvial areas and the low quality of the housing developments produced.
- 21.
Landscaping Laboratory of the Architecture and Urbanism Faculty of the University of São Paulo.
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Queiroga, E.F. (2018). Open Public Spaces and the Vita Activa . In: Capanema Alvares, L., Barbosa, J. (eds) Urban Public Spaces. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74253-3_6
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