Louise Barbalho Pontes[a], Ana Cláudia Duarte Cardoso[a]
[a]
Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), Belém, PA, Brazil
Abstract
The Brazilian Amazon has provoked preservationist discussions for decades, and although there has been
a breakthrough in the recognition of the role of traditional populations for the biome maintenance, most
strategies adopted in the country privileged the region’s scale, without concern about local scale, particularly
features of cities and of their inhabitants. The hypothesis that is pursued in this article is that the space of
Western Amazonian frontier should offer innovative potential for urbanization solutions, especially in the
treatment of open spaces. It also goes to prove that by not fully having structured its territory it could learn
from human history, science framework, and from traditional knowledge. Assuming that urbanization process
across this region takes place in a single space-time, this paper first approaches the dichotomy between
city and nature built over time to deconstruct it, considering contemporary city’s emerging spatiality and
possible evolution scenarios. Marabá was adopted as case study, a city located between states and biomes,
in the economic frontier circumstances of Western Amazonian. The research shows that from the existing
open spaces raise an encouragement to reconcile urbanism and ecology.
Keywords: Amazonian cities. Amazonian frontier. Open spaces. Ecological urbanism.
Resumo
A Amazônia brasileira tem despertado há décadas discussões preservacionistas, e embora tenha havido um
avanço no reconhecimento do papel das populações tradicionais para o bioma, as estratégias adotadas no
país se detém na escala macro da região, sem incorporar as particularidades das cidades e seus habitantes.
A hipótese que se persegue neste artigo é que o espaço de fronteira da Amazônia oriental ofereceria potencial
de inovação para as soluções de urbanização, especialmente no tratamento dos espaços livres, e que por não ter
seu território plenamente estruturado poderia aprender da história, do arcabouço da ciência e das soluções que
1
Some ideas presented in this article were first developed in an article presented at the III APP URBANA Seminar, held in Belém,
Brazil availabe at http://anpur.org.br/app-urbana-2014/anais/ARQUIVOS/GT1-105-121-2014031153723.pdf
LBP is Architect; Master in Architecture and Urbanism at Universidade Federal do Pará, e-mail: louise_bp@hotmail.com
ACDC is Architect; MA in Urban Design (Universidade de Brasília, 1994); PhD in Architecture (Oxford Brookes University, 2002);
Lecturer at Universidade Federal do Pará, e-mail: aclaudiacardoso@gmail.com
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Licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons
Espaços livres: janelas para um urbanismo ecológico na Amazônia oriental1
DOI: 10.1590/2175-3369.008.001.SE06 ISSN 2175-3369
Open spaces: windows for ecological
urbanism in the Eastern Amazon1
Open spaces
emergem espontaneamente. Partindo da premissa de que o processo de urbanização dessas cidades se realiza
em um espaço-tempo único procura-se, primeiramente, desconstruir a visão dicotômica de cidade e natureza
construída ao longo do tempo e refletir a respeito das novas espacialidades da cidade contemporânea com
intuito de refletir a respeito de caminhos possíveis. Adota-se como estudo de caso a cidade de Marabá, situada
em fronteira de estados, de biomas e em situação de fronteira econômica em contexto amazônico. A pesquisa
aponta que dos espaços livres existentes emerge um alento para reconciliar urbanismo e ecologia.
Palavras-chave: Cidades amazônicas. Fronteira amazônica. Espaços livres. Urbanismo ecológico.
Introduction
The wealth of the Amazon region is unquestionable,
it has been treated as a mundi- frontier since its
colonization; it is consistently mentioned in environmental
debates worldwide. What has been less discussed
is the fact that over 70% of its inhabitants lives in
cities, where, until present day, has had no concern
for environmental preservation, despite the central
role that these urban centers might have on diffusion
of ecological concepts and provision of better living
conditions.
While preservationist procedures were reinforced at
the regional scale, urban scale continues to be treated
as free zone regarding environmental constraints
only. In cities under economic frontier circumstances,
development based on economic growth overrides
inhabitants and their relationship with territory at
great speed, resulting in serious environmental and
social tensions, in loss of identity and belonging links.
Despite pessimistic discussion, the hypothesis pursued
in this article is that the Western Amazon frontier could
offer innovative potential for urbanization solutions
benefiting from ecological urbanism approaches,
precisely as conversion of territory and society has
not been completed yet. Thus, it is assumed that the
urbanization process of these cities takes place in an
unique space and time, having the greatest privilege of
the opportunity to learn both from the framework of
centuries of urban experiences in the world, as from
the local traditional knowledge that has been able to
match society and nature over centuries.
This article adopts the city of Marabá as a case
study. Only a century old, the city attracted more than
300.000 inhabitants and a variety of urban experiences
ranging from vernacular urbanization dependable on
balanced exploitation of river and forest provisions,
to a promise of modernist ideal city for the Amazon
that mistook the complex frontier context. The sum
of these experiences and the difficulty in dealing with
the luxurious biome gave way to a discontinuous
urban fabric intersected by open spaces.
Marabá was permeated by exchanges and diversity
since its origins: the exchange between biomes, since
it is located on the border between the savannas and
the tropical forest; and exchange between cultures,
for sheltering ribeirinhos, indigenous people, and
migrants from all regions of the country.
Although the city has always been attractive, the
discovery that it sits on one of the largest mineral
provinces of the world has intensified its attractiveness
and allure. The city’s shape is extremely determined
by physical site and impositions of the biome and
rivers courses, as well as by successive economic
cycles and by national development policies. The city
is composed by six urban districts – Marabá Pioneira,
Nova Marabá, Cidade Nova, Distrito Industrial, São Felix
and Morada Nova (see Figure 1) – each district has a
different origin and history, and also have different
socio spatial arrangements expressing a peculiar
sprawl process since each district is separated from
the others by natural barriers (e.g.: flood plains,
wide rivers).
Marabá has emerged as a trading post for extractive
activities on a headland of land at the confluence of
the rivers Tocantins and Itacaiúnas. This vernacular
formation corresponds today to the Marabá Pioneira
district, which housed the entire population of Marabá
until 1970, when the city expansion begun (Raiol,
2010; Tourinho, 1991).
The urban fabric of Marabá Pioneira shapes a
deformed grid that follows the edge of the rivers
and sets place to a radial asymmetric structure that
converges to the confluence of the rivers. Narrow
streets and riverbanks compose most of the open
spaces system. Streets with diversified land use and
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Figure 1 - Marabá’s Localization and Urban Districts
riverbanks also are the main points of encounter,
exchange and leisure. Previously to the Amazon’s
economic integration to the rest of the country, most
houses had backyards from where it was possible to
produce food and healing herbs. It was also prevailing
the practice of building techniques adapted and
resilient to rivers periodic (annual) flooding.
Since the 1970s, the discovery of astonishing mineral
deposits repositioned those regions in a national and
international work division as a natural resources
supplier (of minerals, hydroelectricity, timber) through
policies and fiscal incentives to land occupation by
new productive uses. It opened an economic frontier
to national and foreigner capital across south of Pará
and other Brazilian states (Rondônia, Mato Grosso,
Tocantins) where old inhabitants which were considered
representative of backwardness by new comers, followed
by a population growth of 72% between 1960s and
1970s. Marabá became a strategic city, crossed by
highways, bridges and a railroad. The condition of new
regional pole motivated the development of the Urban
Expansion Plan of Marabá (Geddes, 1973), financed
and executed by the Federal Government (in a rare
intra-urban scale intervention): a modernist-inspired
plan which promised to create an ideal city to Amazon,
ensuring absorption of migration flows, sheltering of
people affected by the seasonal floods and provision
of a convivial atmosphere between inhabitants and
forest. However, this idealization impinged upon
the reality of the frontier condition and none of the
promises have been fulfilled (Tourinho, 1991).
Ironically, years after the famous criticism of Alexander
(1965) “the city is not a tree”, the plan proposed a
superblocks modulated space that evoked a chestnut
tree leaves and branches: forming neighborhood units,
surrounded by green areas connected by a hierarchical
road system, “twigs” (streets) that should also comply
with urban drainage function, justifying the amount
of median strips and roundabouts of the formal area
of this district. However, though the present plan
exhibited advances regarding the topography use for
drainage, water distribution or roads axis, they were
not fully obeyed due to federal government withdrawal
and local government incapacity to prevent informal
occupation of non-implemented super blocks across
1980s economic crises. Like many planned cities
in the region, the proposal lacked adherence on its
deployment site (either physical or socio-cultural).
The plan presented very distinct features from Marabá
Pioneira: low densities, activities decentralization,
rivers and cars matrix digression that wiped out the
streets as a place of coexistence. The Masterplan for
Nova Marabá was concerned with “modernizing”
(civilizing) the behavior of Marabá’s inhabitants.
This urban experimentation currently results in a
hybrid of spatial structures planned and the endogenous
spaces (informally produced) that reestablished the
connection with the river. In these cases the streets
were given new meanings, transforming the original
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Open spaces
plan to better suit the population aspirations and real
needs. Despite the plan inadequacy, the interviews
revealed that there is still a symbolic image of progress
associated with that district.
On the opposite bank of Itacaiúnas river, another
district was formed by amalgamation of disarticulated
developments, and emerged as Cidade Nova district.
This district emerged with a totally different design from
the modernist district: an orthogonal but disconnected
structure, with few open spaces. The district attracted
large contingents of migrants, who could not afford
the land in other districts, those who could not cope
with floods of Marabá Pioneira, or could not adapt to
urban innovations deployed in Nova Marabá.
In the North of the city, across the river, two
districts were created: Morada Nova and São Félix,
with a fragmented and poorly articulated urban fabric,
with few open spaces, having the road that connects
them to Nova Marabá as their only centrality and core.
Currently, the real estate market activity has further
fragmented the city placing luxury gated communities
and building lots at the Industrial District, and official
housing programs (e.g.: Minha Casa, Minha Vida) in São
Felix and Morada Nova; both strategies fostered quick
conversion of rural land into urban land, raising a new
trend to overcome natural barriers and of occupying
previously reserved land, considered unsuitable for
urbanization.
Despite the new trends, the consolidation of the six
districts comprising Marabá created a discontinuous
urban tissue, crisscrossed by open spaces that might
represent an asset to equate city present problems
(e.g.: precarious sanitation, shortage of public space).
Benefiting from findings on Marabá, the article
highlights the potential of an ecological approach to
the best understanding and conception of solutions
on Western Amazonian cities fair with social and
biological diversity, considering spatial morphology and
topology in different scales, supported by qualitative
research (interviews and social cartography). Although
the region presents a clear trend towards a future
of social exclusion and environmental degradation,
empirical data shows that another path would be
possible if a new paradigm was raised. The recognition
that nature must have a space (e.g.: backyards, flood
plains, river banks vegetation) would help the visibility
in old social practices and in replace solutions that
are usually considered under standard according to
national metrics, but that are durable and valuable
to Brazilian tropical forest preservation, if assumed
that the city values contaminate its area of influence.
Thus, this article aims to highlight the importance
of ecological urbanism for Amazonian cities, from
both theoretical and empirical perspectives.
Reation and dissolution of the city-nature
dichotomy in the history of the city
In order to understand the evolution of Amazonian
cities, and the shift from river to road as their main
structuring axis, and progressive homogenization of
their landscape and culture, they must be framed in
a context of crossed expectations that merges urban
industrial rationality, permeated by worldviews
socially created in the fully industrialized countries,
with traditional productive system and living methods.
The region is perceived as periphery and there is
a strong bias among well succeeded new comers and
entrepreneurs attached to imported models, assumed
as modern and universal, as well as more economically
appealing than practices that cause less impact on
natural site and social practices. The lack of research
regarding local durable practices prevents innovation
and fulfillment of local potential, and they are often
destroyed before they are noticed or understood.
As urban studies are predominantly focused on
metropolises and immersed in the urban-industrial
city, often assumed as reference standard, the other
multiple possibilities of relationship between society
and environment are left out, thus overlooking the
fact that the exogenous standard adopted were also
socially constructed within another contexts. It is
undeniable that the worldviews about city and nature
adopted in Brazil were created at specific time points in
history, and elsewhere to justify specific socioeconomic
strategies. The cities’ history shows that there was a
long construction of the dichotomous view between
city and nature (until the 1st half of the 20th century)
that just happened to be challenged in the last century
(from the 2nd half of the 20th century).
Roots to Marabá’s present circumstances are deeply
laid in Western civilization values regarding how the
relationship between nature and society should be.
In Europe, until the 14th century there was an
inseparable relationship between society and nature
and predominance of an organic worldview. It was
only over the following centuries that private property
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overcame common goods (biological capital of the
world) and entire ecosystems were devastated, and
access to nature became a class privilege.
In a context marked by instability and insecurity
in the medieval city, the walls, besides providing the
craved security, separated what was city from what
was nature in a dualistic and Manichaean view: inside
the walls there were geometric and clearly controlled
gardens associated to the idea of paradise (Eden)
and outside there was “wild” uncontrolled nature
associated with witches, where beasts and danger
were found (Capel, 2002).
These ideas were not established at random: while
the idea of dangerous and undesirable wild nature had
the social function of legitimizing the exploitation of
nature and degradation, the conception of a domesticated
nature had the social function of selling a virtuous,
sublime image, associated with exclusive class leisure.
The notion of “human nature” historically served to
justify the unjustifiable, the dissociation between
society and nature (Smith, 1988).
In the Renaissance period, the idea that the
man was the center of the universe reinforced such
dichotomy, and paved the way for modern age, which
that culminated with the abstract division between
fields of knowledge and between city and nature as
parallel universes (Herzog, 2013).
When urbanism emerged as a field of knowledge
and of practice of a group of professionals, the field of
gardening also strengthened up, both were primarily
concerned with aesthetic dimension of space, but
were able to create new spatial elements such as
squares and plazas; the garden was a trial field that
laid the foundation for additional ambitious urbanism
projects to happen over the last two and half centuries
(Capel, 2002).
In the industrial city, science evolution and popularity
was useful to identify human health problems linked
to the relationship between built space and nature:
ventilation, afforestation or waterways when associated
with the cleaning idea, appeared as elements of interest
to urban planning. It was a utilitarian view of nature
that presented it at service and under the control of
planners. The creation of the first urban parks as city
“lungs” or the rivers and streams channeling to ward
off urban detritus belong to this period.
The focus of the capitalist-industrial system in
the exploitation of natural resources was so well
implemented that by the 19th century there was a
need to define natural spaces as not to be at risk of
devastation. The first of them was Yellowstone Park in
the United States (strategy that guided the Brazilian
preservationist models). The creation of this kind of
protective limits is extremely linked to the industrial
rationality and to the belief that man is incapable of
maintaining balanced relations with nature.
These concepts paved the way for the first urban
operations that systematically dealt with open
spaces. Following the example of interventions of
Paris, by Haussman, or by Cerdá in Barcelona, that in
spite of authoritarianism, influenced the production
methods of cities around the world. More flexible
experiences such as the Ringstrasse in Vienna
(Cspelly-Knorr, 2011), the fringe belts identified by
Conzen’s studies (Whitehand, 2001) or the system of
open spaces designed by Olmsted, may be highlighted
as important urban experiences in the 19th century
(Spirn, 1995).
The new spatial elements that emerged in the city
contributed to the prestige of a low density urbanism
with a stronger appeal to the symbolic rather than
actual demands, the naive belief in science and
technology as carriers of civilization, permeated the
conception of ideal city that emerged in the first half of
the 20th century, such as the Garden Cities proposed
by Ebenezer Howard.
However, it was only after the World Wars and
the perception of finiteness of natural resources and
understanding of industrialized countries patterns of
consumption that the view of nature has turned from
useful to essential, paving the way for the environmental
debate in vogue over the last few decades. Although
it seems a distant history, the idea of nature (and its
deriving spatialization) adopted nowadays is strongly
related to the ideology of nature developed throughout
this trajectory.
The colonization of Brazil took place under the
ongoing dichotomous view of society and nature,
sustained by dominating philosophies, advocated
by science to justify exploitation and degradation in
the colonies.
However, the colonizers strategy was not homogeneous
for the whole Brazilian territory. While the country’s
coastline produced sugar cane and Atlantic Forest
exploitation, Amazon was controlled and reserved for
future exploitation and was treated as mundi-frontier
being subject of dispute between Portuguese, Spanish,
Dutch, British and French (Becker, 2013). It was kept
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Open spaces
in a different condition compared to the rest of the
country to this very day; in the 18th Century Portugal
expected to subdivide Brazil and creating Brazil of
North corresponding to present Amazon, as was the
case of other Amazonian countries.
Human occupation was dispersed and scattered
across the forest, dependent on river accessibility and
possibility of extractive activities. Only two metropolises
connected this vast region to the world, Belém and
Manaus. Outside cities thrived with markets and
places to access public services, with strong presence
of public life at the river banks (place of ports, civic,
retail and religious centrality), and easy connection
with common areas (seen as either wild or rural) used
to supply food, healing herbs, and provide leisure.
In the first half of the 20th century (when the
Brazilian industrialization foundations were laid)
there was an alignment of wealthier parts of Brazilian
cities and European sanitary strategies when the
hygienist view of nature was adopted. However, in the
Amazon region (except for big cities such as Belem
and Manaus) predominated the ribeirinho (traditional
riverine people) way of living: extraction, family labor
force and close relations between society and nature,
way of life able to foster sustainability (Cardoso &
Ventura, 2013).
In Nothern countries, across the second half of the
20th century, there was an epistemological review that
raised new fields of knowledge and a deep critique
to the rationalist and authoritarian bases of current
urbanism. Despite the long periods of time taken to
align urban and environmental debates, approaches
such as urban design and landscape urbanism, as
well as urban experiences such as the Finger Plan in
Copenhagen or the review of plans in Paris, Berlin
or Barcelona post ECO-92 have indicated need for
innovation based on identification of local potentials,
social values and culturally built knowledge.
In the same period, Brazilian industrialization took
the automotive industry as an anchor and prompted
society to import spatial codes from the American
suburban experience. Meanwhile, the modernist-inspired
conception of space was embraced by the Federal
Government, despite the existence of harsh criticism
to those models in Nothern countries. In fact, while
Europe lived an intense epistemological review,
Brazil was ruled by a military regime and followed
a developmentalist orientation, which prioritized
economic rationality. The Brazilian Amazon was deeply
transformed by military geopolitics, through economic
integration and the exploitation of natural resources
approach, that ended up turning up the region into
an “urbanized forest” (Becker, 2013).
Reverberation of such epistemological review
arrived in the 1980s, with the end of the military
dictatorship, when social-based discussions were
embraced, but the city’s spatiality was relegated to
a second plan. The approach to urban management
adopted in the country (Master Plans) has had little
influence over the city design or its relationship with
biophysical dimensions. Only in the 21st Century, cities
in Western Amazon started to organize cartography
matching spatial and socio economic data that could
deepen understanding of problems at local level,
and their connections with invisibilities, such as of
traditional inhabitants.
There is a profusion of concepts, proclamations,
and promises to the city of the 21st century, and
although such concepts are still under construction
and few consensus were built, they highlight a need
of conceiving other pathways based on the search
for an ecological paradigm, in its deepest conception,
including details of social relations and subjectivities,
as well as about the environment where they are
inserted.
While in Northern countries the maturation of
urban studies has been based in the search for quality
of life and diffusion of strategies such as SmartCodes,
Green and Blue Grids or Systems of Open Spaces,
Brazil still watches an intensification of urban and
environmental problems, with reproduction of urban
sprawl failed models.
Although the strategies developed in Northern
countries do not reach the heart of global environmental
problems, created by excessive consumption and
unequal development, they may be used as an asset
for global competition between cities, with undeniable
benefits when, they reestablish the organic relationship
between city and nature, and develop experiences and
methods capable of transcending the industrial city
dichotomous view and reconcile natural functions
to human needs. This body of knowledge may better
guide the search for urban-environmental quality
around the world, such as Marabá, when migrants
are proud of been pioneers in the fight against the
forest Technological evolution and easy access to
information and maps, made the contemporary
frontier and the domination of “free lands” different
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from bygone frontiers. The present challenge is to
avoid outdated misconceptions, and to seek paths
that may lead to a gregarious city in its cultural, social
and environmental dimensions, particularly in spaces
that are not yet fully consolidated as in the case of
the Amazonian frontier (see Box 1).
Present decisions might benefit from past lessons
and capacity to acknowledge successful experiences;
in addition to potential assets created by recent
urbanization, mix of culture and of expectations
about the possible urban experience in a region once
dominated by tropical forest.
The contemporary city form: the new
protagonist of open spaces
There are few studies on the city spatial features
(natural and built) within Amazonian context,
compared to other contemporary cities worldwide.
Although authors studying the new spatiality of the
contemporary city refer, in general, to the major
global cities and metropolis, it is easy to see aspects
of these spatialities unfolding in a city like Marabá.
The last century was not only the century of
epistemological review, but also the century of
worldwide urbanization and the comprehension
that the city is the ultimate human habitat (Marshall,
2009). If before the big cities were concentrated in
industrialized countries, today the great boom of
urban growth is in the non-industrialized countries
(Davis, 2006); the Amazon region is no exception to
this pattern.
The more urbanized the world becomes, more
knowledge about the city is gathered and paradoxically
more difficult is its apprehension. Indeed, the
evolution of technology and the speed of transport and
communication have transformed the once compact
and finite cities (easier to understand) in an open and
sprawling reverse condition, hardly delimited, in a
spatiality that is not finite, or controllable.
The old metaphor of the city as a machine or
as an organism no longer fits in large urban areas.
New forms and new descriptions emerged within the
city (dual city, fractal city, generic city, infernal city or
slums city), most of them reinforcing pessimism and
clearly expressing the need of review in the ways the
contemporary urban space is produced.
For Koolhaas’s (2013) greatness and little theoretical
depth on this topic have contributed to the poor
quality of urban space. To the author’s, greatness is
independent of architects. Solà-Morales (2002) agrees
with that view when he shows how much the urban
fabric has become loose on the architects drawing
boards, who are dedicated to specific points of the city,
as if architecture were nothing more than containers,
where everything can be controlled (climate, security,
etc.) but that exempts respect or concern regarding
what is around (the site and city itself).
The figure-ground reversal that took place in
the transition from traditional to modern city, in
the postmodern world, gave place to diffuse and
polycentric spatiality, interspersed with “holes”,
“empty” open spaces, especially in those countries
that have adopted the car oriented matrix, inspired
by the American suburb spatial codes, like Brazil and
show how much urban sprawl spreads and fades the
boundaries between rural and urban.
Research reports recently conclude similar
patterns in medium cities spatialities in the state of
Para, Brazil (such as Marabá, Santarem and Altamira)
(INPE, 2014). Although open spaces are all unbuilt
spaces, public or private, not completely assimilated
by the urban fabric or just empty or occupied by water
and vegetation. They do not represent any urban or
environmental quality assurance, since such spaces
Box 1 - Potential of the Amazonian frontier context
DIFFERENT RATIONALITIES
The economic context and late implementation of
logistics industry not fully homogenized spaces, and it
is still possible to find different forms of urban space
appropriation, old and new.
PARTIALLY STRUCTURED SPACE
It allows the privilege of learning from the centuries of
accumulated history and experiences in the world, gathering
a significant urban science framework, provided that there
is political will and capacity to create mediations between
situations of reference and local destinies.
Original compilation from sources cited in the text.
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AVAILABILITY OF OPEN
SPACES
The imposition of the biome provided an urban fabric
intersected by open spaces not yet assimilated by
the market, by the urban-industrial logic or informally
occupied by population that cannot afford urbanized
land.
Open spaces
may be degraded or may not represent any relationship
with urban life, but they represent an important part
of this new urban condition, and could become the
backbone to the territory governance based on the
continuity between city, wide and rural areas.
In the framework assembled by urban studies,
three approaches can be highlighted to understand
the open spaces as elements that can qualify the
urban life and match city and nature: urban design,
landscape urbanism and urban ecology.
Available methodology: the framework
assembled by science
Urban design, landscape urbanism, urban ecology
Since the cited epistemological review, an important
collection of experiences, theories and methodologies
on the city materiality was gathered, however they
had little influence on Brazilian urban policies.
Although there are no clear limits between the
methods on how to study the city materiality, the
approaches present even more convergence and
become richer and richer in methodologies capable
of revealing the place (loci) and it’s potential.
If, on one hand, urban design relies more on the
relationship between the built mass and the open
spaces and on the support given to users (though
divided into various categories and epistemological
priorities), in another perspective the landscape
urbanism seeks to understand beyond the elements
of the city plan (routes, lots and buildings), the grid
of biophysical relationships that support it, while the
urban ecology focuses on the resilience of wildlife in
urban areas (see Box 2).
Together, these approaches contribute to the
construction of an ecological urbanism, in its deepest
conception, that welcomes beside the environmental
subject, social relationships and human subjectivity,
through tools tested by several authors (e.g. apprehension
methods and quality parameters) from several research
lines that draw up the city’s materiality universe of
studies.
From this perspective, empirical analysis carried out
in this paper aimed to unveil convergences between
the three cited approaches, by adopting scales, layers
and processes as tools to produce cartographies,
which were complemented by interviews and field
observation. The design principles presented in Box 3
were assumed as quality parameters for a comparative
analysis of the studied districts of Marabá.
Beyond the universal: the importance of the context
However, in addition to universal methods, it is
important to remember the importance of the contexts
and the correspondence between the planner’s
expectations and the real demands.
A more impeller than normative positioning
perspective is needed seeking to understand facts that
state the ongoing processes and local particularities
and to go beyond a romanticized idea or a mercantile
Box 2 - Comparative Matrix for Urban Design, Landscape Urbanism and Urban Ecology Approaches
URBAN DESIGN
LANDSCAPE URBANISM
URBAN ECOLOGY
RESEARCH FOCUS
Relations between built and open spaces design
and its impact in human life
Relations between nature and human needs on
open spaces design and urbanism
Relations between natural organisms, urban
structure and its surrounding
KEY AUTHORS
Alexander et al. (1977), Cullen (1978), Lynch
(1999), Gehl (2006)
McHarg (1969), Spirn (1995), Hough (1995)
Dramstad et al. (1996)
SCALE OF WORK
City, District, Neighborhood, Streets, Plots,
Building, Furniture
City, District, Neighborhood, Streets, Plots,
Gardens
Region, Territory, City
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Design as a process, diversity, identity, security,
access, stativity, urbanity.
Design as a process, diversity, identity, security,
access, stativity for people and for wild life
Connections, continuities, biological diversity
ELEMENTS FOR SPATIAL
ANALYSIS
Plots, Routes and Buildings
Layers (water, earth, air, green areas, etc.)
Patches-Corridors-Matrix
ANALYSIS METHODS
Cartographies, field observations and interviews
overlapping layers
identifying remaining ecosystems
Original compilation from sources cited in the text.
urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana (Brazilian Journal of Urban Management), 2016 jan./abr., 8(1), 96-112
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Pontes, L. B., & Cardoso, A. C. D.
vision of ecological urbanism. In fact a city planning
for people to experience life in every way, contributing
to the dissolution of the false barriers between city
and nature or between rural and urban.
Thus, it is important to remember that to explore
the urban frontier context is to “dive” into a mutant
and hybrid reality, where temporalities and the ways
of living and producing cities are mixed, and resist to
the imposition of urban-industrial standards and its
promises, that never reach the city as a whole.
Open spaces in Marabá: windows
for ecological urbanism
At a glance, Marabá may seem a city that has few
public spaces or urban quality for people, where
ecological reconstruction and search for new paradigms
might be distant. However, in a deeper analysis, it is
possible to observe a huge presence of open spaces
(as evidenced in the cartography), and the use of areas
not strictly urbanized for leisure in the city (evidenced
by interviews and field observations).
Evidences show that environmental concern does
not reach the city (local) scale, where most of the
population lives in Western Amazon. To understand
processes in course and envision possible proposals
for an ecological urbanism, the space of Marabá was
decomposed in three scales (territorial scale, urban
scale and district scale) and each scale was subdivided
in layers (water, roads/railroads, topography and
vegetation), and as the scale decreased further
analysis elements became visible (see Figure 2).
In the territorial scale is important to highlight the
importance of the Amazon forest for the country and
the world, and show that Marabá is in the area called
Arc of deforestation reinforcing the importance of
environmental strategies at that place. In Marabá
surroundings we can find dense forests, open forests
and disturbed areas. The county is predominantly rural
and most of the territory is occupied by farms, the
urban area occupies only a small portion at the north
of the whole municipality. The layers crossing reveals
how intertwined the preserved areas and waterways
are, and, in that sense the large number of rivers in
the region contributes to the biome preservation
Box 3 - Guidelines for open spaces analysis in Marabá
Guidelines for open spaces analysis in Marabá
ELEMENTS FOR SPATIAL ANALYSIS
SCALES, LAYERS AND PROCESSES
QUALITY PARAMETERS
DIVERSITY, ATTRACTIVELY, COMFORT, ACCESS, SECURITY AND IDENTITY
ANALYSIS METHODS
CARTOGRAPHIES, FIELD OBSERVATIONS AND INTERVIEWS
Original compilation from sources cited in the text.
Figure 2 - Scales and Layers: Steps of Analysis Applied to Marabá
Authors (2014). Cartographic base: IRS-R2-LISS3 (INPE, 2010).
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Open spaces
(three river basins cut the county and three are fully
contained in its territory).
The urbanized area corresponding to the city of
Marabá has a polynuclear and ragged shape by open
spaces, particularly rivers and wetlands; it has four
axes of expansion corresponding to the highways
that cross the city. In addition to the open spaces
not designed for appropriation by people. Over the
six districts comprised it was identified by eight
squares and the urbanized riverbank of Tocantins
River, which are quite attractive to the population.
The crossing of the layers in the urban scale unveils
the links between water and preserved areas, and
also the relationship between topography with more
or less informal areas (the occupation of the lower
levels is usually associated with informal use).
For the analysis of the district scale were adopted
only the three biggest districts, since they basically
concentrate all the city’s services and infrastructure.
This scale of analysis allows the easier identification
of biophysical and spatial layers and of qualitative
criteria supported by literature and the testimonies
of the interviewers.
The case of Marabá becomes even more interesting
if analyzed as an urban trials laboratory, the three
main districts were produced mainly by different
actors: Marabá Pioneira had vernacular formation,
Nova Marabá was planned by the State and Cidade
Nova was formed by market strategies, each with
its peculiarities, trends and unique designs, but all
interwoven by a wave of informality and spontaneous
interventions that invite us to reflect on the formal
ways of designing city (see Box 4).
Thus it could be important to devote a closer look
to the informally produced space, often associated
with poverty and precariousness, since more than
simple materials and improvisation, the endogenous
formulations are loaded with innovations and ways
(not yet discovered by the formal planning) to
reconcile urban design and ecology, space built and
Box 4 - Comparative Analysis and Lessons from Marabá’s Districts
Quality Parameters
District Performance
DIVERSITY
ATTRACTIVELY
COMFORT
MARABÁ PIONEIRA > CIDADE NOVA > NOVA MARABÁ
ACCESS
SECURITY
IDENTITY
Lessons from marabá’s districts
MARABÁ PIONEIRA
NOVA MARABÁ
CIDADE NOVA
Use diversity, coexistence of different social classes, human scale,
pedestrianisation, respect for traditions and everyday life. No imposition of
an ideal way. Understanding of the importance of history to the creation of
identity (as a link that causes people to feel belonging to that place and feel
the need/necessity to take care of it); Afforestation and climate amenities,
preservation of traditional interactions with the river and the neighborhood.
There is no ideal way and not an ideal
modern-man behaves as planned in a plan.
The overvaluation of the car causes the
death of living on the streets, empty the
street cause insecurity, the dryness doesn’t
invite the coexistence, the low readability
of space invites you to stroll. The presence
of green areas contributes to the urban
drainage (these can be designed in a more
attractive and complete). The progress is
not even in the forms or in the materials
used but in improving the quality of life in
the city.
Reconciling traditional relations and contemporary
structures. Ensure diversity of use of public space that
allows access to different income ranges. Need for
vegetation to absorb the impact of highways. Need
for soothing climate vegetation on the streets so that
invite the movement of pedestrians.
Original compilation from sources cited in the text.
Authors (2015). Cartographic base: Wikimapia (2015).
urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana (Brazilian Journal of Urban Management), 2016 jan./abr., 8(1), 96-112
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Pontes, L. B., & Cardoso, A. C. D.
nature, diversity, and equal access, categories highly
recommended by postmodern literature.
Moreover, the informal space has been an alternative
for those covered by the urban-industrial logic, a space
of resistance and resilience of other rationalities and
ways of interact with people and environment (as we
can see in the cultivated backyards, in the knowledge
about the forest, or in the capacity to live without
tearing down the forest or in the leisure that does
not degrade) (see Figure 3).
Figure 3 - Informal and formal space in Nova Marabá
Hybrid condition in Nova Marabá. Authors (2014).
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Open spaces
Interviews have showed many descriptions about
leisure that go beside the squares and include rivers,
the waterfall, the beach, trips to farms or nearby
islands as key elements to inhabitants experience
leisure, recreation and welfare. This evidences that
leisure, interaction, identity and collective memory
are extremely intertwined with the city’s nature.
The inseparable relationship between culture, city
and nature is evident in Marabá, but is not part of
the public management vision about public spaces
production whose positions are occupied by new
comers. The proximity and links between leisure,
culture and nature gradually dissipate in desire for
modernity that shapes in the city an exogenous model,
which separates city and nature with all socio-spatial
implications that this separation entails.
The intersection of the scales and layers were
revealed three loss processes and a possible way to
reverse it.
public spaces, full of historical and sentimental value
for the population. It raises a new kind of exclusion,
as the access to nature progressively becomes a high
economic class privilege.
The fading of conservation areas: the established
dichotomy on environmental preservation in Brazil
has contributed a mismatch, while conservation areas
are invisible to people, they disappear without public
notice or awareness; and in this sense, urbanity may
and should be a preservation strategy.
Marabá presents a scenario of diversity destruction of
the ways of seeing and living the world, by homogenizing
urban-industrial rationality, reaching all the territory
scales. At the macro-scale, the great works and great
environmental impacts are observed, and in the
micro-scale backyards, private open spaces friendly
to traditional knowledge and helpful in providing
food security, are fading quickly due to the imported
urban logics over recent decades.
The narrative of loss
The landscape design: how to reverse the loss
The fading of the backyards, is occurred ongoing
fact in most big and medium size cities in Brazil due
to the new dynamics of the housing market and the
demand for built space in the cities, but that it is
rarely mentioned as an environmental loss (given the
biophysical role that they can meet the absorption of
pollutants, rainwater, etc.) and in the Amazon region
it is also a cultural loss, since gardens have been
widely used for the production of food and medicinal
products typical of the riverine culture, knowledge
related to biome abundance that gradually cease to
exist in the cities.
The fading of public spaces: despite the public
spaces of Marabá still being very attractive, they have
not been a priority for city managers; the greatest
concern is settled in the progress ideology that
associates development of major projects (works)
involving large capital, but also environmental
degradation, which has a strong impact on popular
leisure alternatives and quality of life of Marabá.
Works on Itacaiúnas and Tocantins Rivers, such as
the forthcoming hydroelectric of Marabá, approved
by the federal government, besides to attracting
large numbers of workers (without any preparation
to receive them) will destroy the only beach and the
only waterfall available to city inhabitants, popular
If so many people have lost their backyards, then
public spaces and the interaction with nature are
losing power, despite the fact that there are still
people who are very connected to nature in the city,
the open spaces appear with a boost not just to bring
connection between the districts, but also to the
reestablishment and recognition of the relationship
between culture and nature. A system of open spaces
and the landscape design can mean empowerment,
innovation based on the actual demands and collective
construction, in addition to providing environmental
and urban quality.
To make the system of open spaces of Marabá
visible, fragments1 and corridors have been identified
(alongside the potential to create or complete them)
in the grid they could form (matrix), as well as the
articulation between the thicker and thin grain proposed
by Richard T. T. Forman (Mostafavi & Doherty, 2014)
in the three scales (see Figure 4).
The produced images show that the system of
open spaces of Marabá is fragmented and has not
1
Enric Batlle explains Forman’s concepts as: Patches como
espacios de interés natural existentes o posibles. Corridors
son elementos que permiten conectividad ecológica. Matrix
como la malla o estructura ecológica que explica la forma y
el funcionamiento de un mosaico (Batlle, 2011, p. 162-163).
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Pontes, L. B., & Cardoso, A. C. D.
Figure 4 - Patches, corridors and matrix identified from satellite image
Authors (2014). Cartographic base: IRS-R2-LISS3 (INPE, 2010).
only been untreated in fact as a system, but also that
the fragments could be easily articulated if the this
intention was real.
On the territorial scale, we can see rural properties
with small and large green covered fragments that
correspond to areas of environmental preservation,
but practically no corridors. However, the strong
presence of rivers and their tracks of domain (referred
as permanent preservation areas by environmental
legislation in Brazil), in addition to the railroad, could
easily act as potential corridors of wildlife able to
connect scales and fragments (see Figure 5).
On urban scale, the remaining fragments of water
imposition over the territory form practically green
belts between the districts. Almost without any
planning of open spaces, it occurs in a proportion
indicated by the urban ecology, the entanglement
between areas of thin grain (more densely populated
and with small green areas within easy reach) with
thicker grain areas (more distant and with large areas
which allow the occurrence of greater diversity) that
together provide the best setting for urban life and
reproduction of wildlife (see Figure 6).
The district scale also has great potential for the
creation of continuities.
In Marabá Pioneira, the most attractive, comfortable
and accessible district which has genuine identity
ties, has public spaces that may be designed in a
systemic way with other open spaces, such as streets.
The radial form of the streets ends in an area of
environmental preservation and offers great potential
for the formation of corridors through construction
sites (already existing in the main avenues) and in
residential areas of less traffic presents potential for
planned streets in accordance with environmental
parameters (permeable floors, afforestation, etc.)
and social (speed reduction from cars, shared spaces,
spaces for sitting, cycling, etc.) the woonerf defended
by authors like Spirn (1995), Hough (1995) or Gehl
(2013).
In Nova Marabá District, public spaces are poorer,
less attractive and should be considered in order to
become more attractive and comfortable. Furniture
and vegetation should be provided to mitigate the
climate and long distances. However, the drainage
system through continuous and extensive beds and
main strips also offers great possibilities of articulation
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Open spaces
Figure 5 - Open Spaces System – Territorial Scale
Authors (2014). Cartographic base: IRS-R2-LISS3 (INPE, 2010).
Figure 6 - Open Spaces System – Urban Scale
Authors (2014). Cartographic base:IRS-R2-LISS3 (INPE, 2010).
between the thicker grain areas and the interior of
the district. Particular corridors can also minimize
the impact of automobiles and create inviting spaces
to stay, one of the major shortcomings of this space.
In Cidade Nova District, the orthogonal urban fabric
is also connected to the preservation area and the
streets could be designed in such a way as to create
wooded corridors. The balnearies (places infrastructure
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Pontes, L. B., & Cardoso, A. C. D.
Figure 7 - Open Spaces System – District Scale
Authors (2014). Cartographic base: IRS-R2-LISS3 (INPE, 2010).
to support popular leisure on riverbanks) show the
possibility coexistence of preservation and human
activity, the human presence is not necessarily a risk
and can be supportive to preservation (see Figure 7).
Linear parks can be encouraged on the banks of
inner city rivers, squares and spaces for children and
adults should be thought about in areas inside the
nucleus, while the banks of the roads green spaces
can be designed to minimize the traffic intensity of
the impacts of cars and trucks.
From spaces transformed spontaneously, lesson
of reconnecting inhabitants and rivers are taken,
fostering diversity and simplicity. It is not a matter
of financial resources by of understanding spatial
patterns and potentials.
In addition, innovative experiences as orchards
or urban gardens in partnership with universities
or neighborhood associations can be thought to the
flooded areas and lookouts could be created in the
areas of preserved forest, encouraging preservation
of popular knowledge about the biome, something
crucial to reverse the process loss.
It is recommendable that design of open spaces is
devised as a system, as basis for a joint city project,
able to recognize potentials, and to foster utopias able
to guide improvement projects for the city.
All of the presented evidence shows that Marabá
has a great potential to reconcile urban and biophysical
processes, the lack of planning and the economic
rationality megalomania could not yet fully erase
the diversity and environmental quality, despite the
voracity in which this can occur.
Final considerations
The process of urbanization in an economic frontier
conditions, in the Brazilian Amazon, takes place in
a single space-time that has as its main privilege
the opportunity to learn from both the framework
assembled by science and from the endogenous
experiences.
In the city of Marabá the biome imposition gave
rise to discontinuous urban fabric, interspersed with
open spaces. The availability of open spaces over the
whole city territory is a differential that could be used
to meet urban, environmental and cultural functions.
However, the city’s expansion process based on a
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Open spaces
vision of industrial progress is leading toward the
disappearance of these spaces, as well as the culture
that entwines ways of life and nature. It devaluates
traditional people and the original forest.
Unlike most consolidated cities and metropolises
taken as urban development references in Brazil,
the shape and arrangement of existing open spaces
in Marabá, although not treated as a system, could
easily form corridors and an array of fundamental
interest for the formation of a more gregarious city.
If design in Marabá were oriented by ecological
urbanism, ties between culture and nature would
be strengthened, to the benefit of urban and
environmental quality. In addition it would assume
actual continuity between rural and urban territories
better connecting cities to tropical forest, and also
new comers and local people, in the most urbanized
part of Brazilian Amazon. It could be inspiring to
other countries in South America and in Africa, where
quite similar urbanization processes are in progress
(e.g.: Mozambique).
To the narrative of loss, it is possible to respond
with the landscape design, crossing the threshold
of criticism to show that there are other possible
and feasible paths. The design is then presented as
an instrument for recognition and production of
knowledge, and also as a tool to make scientifically
visible the potential not easily recognized. Thus it
would be possible to foster awareness about the fact
that a periphery is only periphery while it cannot
use its potential and wealth properly, due to lack of
institutional support, misguided investment orientation,
or imposition of outdated models and formulas.
In addition, the emergence of a new paradigm of
ecological urbanism, gestated by long experience in
industrialized countries, could inspire new people and
nature friendly processes and create more gregarious
and happy cities to live in Western Amazon.
Acknowledgements
Authors acknowledge the support of CNPq, CAPES
and UrbisAmazonia Research Project (Funcate, ITV,
Fundação Vale).
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Received: June 15, 2015
Approved: Oct. 08, 2015
urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana (Brazilian Journal of Urban Management), 2016 jan./abr., 8(1), 96-112
Where it reads:
“Open spaces: windows for ecological urbanism in the Western Amazon”
It should read:
“Open spaces: windows for ecological urbanism in the Eastern Amazon”
In the same article, on page 96:
Where it reads:
“Western Amazonian”
It should read:
“Eastern Amazonian”
In the same article, on page 97:
Where it reads:
“Western Amazon frontier”
It should read:
“Eastern Amazon frontier”
In the same article, on page 99:
Where it reads:
“Reation and dissolution of the city-nature dichotomy in the history of the city”
It should read:
“Creation and dissolution of the city-nature dichotomy in the history of the city”.
In the same article, on page 102:
Where it reads:
“The contemporary city form: the new protagonist of open spaces”
It should read:
“The contemporary city form: the new protagonism of open spaces”
In the same article, on page 105:
Where it reads:
“ATTRACTIVELY”
It should read:
“ATTRACTIVENESS”
In the same article, on page 105:
Where it reads:
“Original compilation from sources cited in the text. Authors (2015). Cartographic base: Wikimapia (2015)”
It should read:
“Original compilation from sources cited in the text”.
urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana (Brazilian Journal of Urban Management
Licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons
In the article “Open spaces: windows for ecological urbanism in the Western Amazon”, DOI number:
10.1590/2175-3369.008.001.SE06, published in urbe - Brazilian Journal of Urban Management, 8(1): 96-112,
on page 96:
DOI: 10.1590/2175-3369.009.001.ER01 ISSN 2175-3369
Errata