Vulnerabilidade socioambiental como decorrência do processo de expansão urbana de Campina Grande-PB.

Abstract

From man’s nomadism and domain specific techniques, the society was able to develop, and the cities began to emerge. After the Industrial Revolution, cities began to experience a phenomenon called urban sprawl due to structural changes in the practiced economic model in industrialized cities, as well as the changes relating to labor relations, which made the city the center of economic, political and social relations. Brazil absorbed industrialization late, which resulted in significant progress in a short time. In this way, the intense process of urban sprawl that took place in Brazil from the 1950s resulted in the increase of social inequalities and the consequent increase of the population's vulnerability with less capacity to respond to adverse events. On the above, this work started from the premise that the level of urban socio-environmental vulnerability is proportionally related to the urban sprawl phenomenon, characterized by segmentation and social differentiation, demographic, economic and environmental, and the higher levels of vulnerability correspond to higher impact, risk and difficulty to recover from the damaging effects. The aim of this study is to analyze the process of urban sprawl of Campina Grande, which occurred between the period 1970-2010, as well as its contribution ratio to the increase of socio-environmental vulnerability of the population of the city, seeking to locate spatially the neighborhoods that are most vulnerable in this process. The methodology used here was guided, first, the characterization of the urban expansion of Campina Grande and, then, the application of the proposed methodology developed by Maior (2014) to quantify the Socio-environmental Vulnerability Index of Campina Grande, object study of this work. This methodology uses 34 indicators, of which 29 related to socio-economic dimension and 5 relating to the environmental dimension were considered for each of the 50 neighborhoods of Campina Grande that resulted in indices ranging from 0.0 to 1.0, so that the way that higher the index increased, higher will be the vulnerability of that indicator. The socioeconomic and environmental dimensions were worked separately for at a later stage, both overlap and get the Socioenvironmental Vulnerability Index of Campina Grande. With the results, it could be concluded that urban sprawl has contributed to the increase in socio-environmental vulnerability levels due to its characteristics: spontaneous urban expansion, based on the peripherization of the poorest through the (re) lease these to popular condominiums built in urban voids, far from the center, denying this population access to many basic services and access to urban infrastructure, expanding existing social inequalities. This reflected the increased vulnerability of the present neighborhoods in the urban fringe, as well as those who, at another time, were located on the periphery of the city.