Perspectives on Green: Recent Urbanisation Works and Measures in Brazil and India

Abstract

The current study intends to explore green infrastructure issues in recent urbanisation works and measures employed in informal contexts and peripheral areas in Brazil, in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and in climate-vulnerable areas in India, in the cities of Vijayawada and Guntur (Andhra Pradesh), highlighting the difficulties that arise in their implementation process and also considering their social inequalities. In São Paulo, we will focus on urbanisation works that deal with urban drainage, undertaken by the local municipality and the state’s government (Tietê Meadows Park). In Rio de Janeiro, we will analyse urban projects for two bus rapid transit (BRT Transoeste and Transcarioca) lines that are a part of the recent works in public transport launched by Rio’s municipality in the context of the preparation of the city to host big international events. In India, the selected cities were Vijayawada and Guntur that are strongly affected by the escalation of the social and environmental vulnerabilities tied to climate change, such as cyclones that have great impacts on the low-income population. We approach scales that are often divergent or opposite, typical of cities in developing countries, which underwent a vertiginous demographic and territorial growth in the past century and will continue to grow in the present. We search to envisage aspects and contexts in which concepts of green infrastructure were or are being incorporated, outlining their complexity and the public administration inertia when it comes to intervene in urban spaces. Despite the geographical distance that separates Brazil and India, and all their great sociocultural differences, in what it regards urbanisation works and measures and the environment it seems that both countries would be going through similar issues, where there is a foundational gap between practices from the past and discourses towards the future.