An Environmental Health Typology as a Contributor to Sustainable Regional Urban Planning: The Case of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (MRSP)

Abstract

The recognition of metropolitan regions and their growth as a necessary scale of analysis for their integrated management has become a central characteristic of urban planning. The current metropolitan landscape warrants the use of instruments beyond the municipal scale, especially since the economic integration of cities and their development are accentuating urban problems that affect the sustainability of cities. The São Paulo Metropolitan Region (MRSP), one of the world’s megacities, is used as a case study to identify how typologies can contribute to integrated sustainable urban planning and management at the metropolitan level. It applies the territorial analytical typology based on the Driving-Force-Pressure-Situation-Exposure-Effect-Actions (DPSEEA) Environmental Health Matrix to identify the heterogeneity of conditions encountered in large metropolitan regions such as the MRSP. The results show a great variety of environmental and social conditions present in the municipalities of the MRSP that condition the sustainability and health of the urban environment. This typology constitutes a first step to characterize metropolitan regions in socioenvironmental terms using as a conceptual basis a matrix of environmental health indicators, being a precursor in the largest metropolitan region of Brazil.