Intra-urban water security: depoliticizing metrics and the invisibility of vulnerabilities, the case of São Bernardo do Campo - SP
Among the main topics relevant to society in the 21st century, water, and issues related to it, are almost always, materially or virtually, present in debates on territorial planning and management. Governments, productive sectors, civil society organizations and many individuals recognize the urgency of establishing strategic actions to improve the management and planning of water resources. However, from this recognition emerge important questions to be considered: What concepts should be created, adopted and articulated to guide interpretations and propositions about water management? What ramifications reflect the concepts and how are social groups differently affected depending on the theoretical orientation of water planning and management adopted? What metrics are appropriate to support socially fair decisions? These questions are extremely relevant to make explicit the central premise of this study: water and society are an internally related and inherently political hybrid. Therefore, the theoretical approaches that guide decisions on urban water security must consider urban sociopolitical phenomena, such as, for example, uneven urbanization. Therefore, analytical tools – metrics, scales, technologies – must be articulated to build responses that are up to this challenge. We argue that metrics and scales of intra-urban social phenomena can provide innovative elements in water security approaches. Finally, a case study will be carried out, based on secondary data, on the reality of Intra-urban Water Security in São Bernardo do Campo-SP, with emphasis on the Montanhão and Santa Cruz neighborhoods.