Urban upgrading of informal settlement - Watershed prrotected areas- Billings. The case of PAC Alvarenga- São Bernardo-SP
The research aims to analyze, under the socio-environmental dimension, the process of land use
and occupation of informal settlements and housing policies in protected areas and in the specific case,
the instruments of the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) applied in the case study PAC Alvarenga ,
in São Bernardo, located in the Billings Reservoir Hydrographic Basin – SP.
The expansion of informal settlements in environmentally fragile areas is a reflection of social inequality
and spatial inequality. (MARICATO, 1987, 2003; ACSERALD, 2009; ALVES, 2006.).
And it is in areas rejected by the private real estate market and in public areas, located in devalued regions
that the poor working population will settle: along streams, hillsides, land subject to flooding or other types of risks
where the validity of protective legislation and lack of supervision define devaluation (MARICATO, 2003).
There is a correlation between very poor population groups with high deprivation (social vulnerability) and
areas of risk or environmental degradation (environmental vulnerability) in the Municipality of
São Paulo (ALVES, 2006). And this expansion of informal settlements in environmentally sensitive areas
also ended up happening in Watersehd Protected Areas. In the specific case of the Billings Reservoir
Hydrographic Basin, on the one hand, it is important to highlight its role in the public water supply
of the metropolitan regions of São Paulo and Baixada Santista,
for generating electricity and other uses such as fishing and leisure. and flood control. (ESCAMES, 2018).
On the other hand, there are a total of 237 informal settlements in São Bernardo do Campo,
of which 112 (41.9%) are in the urban area and 155 (58.1%) in the APRM –
Billings (Protection and Recovery Area of Water Sources). – Billings) (DENALDI, R. et al., 2019),
initially revealing a potential conflict of uses. The research under development has the perspective
of understanding, under the socio-environmental dimension, to what extent the interventions of
the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) in the case of PAC Alvarenga in São Bernardo – SP,
promoted improvements, based on the analysis of descriptors quantitative and
qualitative applied to an informal settlements urbanization project.