Search

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 Sao 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 Sao Paulo, we will focus on urbanisation works that deal with urban drainage, undertaken by the local municipality and the state’s government (Tiete 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.

With the understanding of nature in terms of ecosystem services and the recognition of the vital role these play for human well-being (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005), the value of the natural realm is scientifically and socially defined while at the same time institutionalized. Within this frame of interpretation, nature is a supplier of provisioning, regulating and cultural services, thus becoming not only a life-enabling factor for humanity but also a conceptual construct comparable to cornerstones of democracy, such as equality, freedom, and citizenship. The idea of green infrastructure is another recently coined term envisioning nature in cities in the form of a network and enabling a broad life-furthering vision of society. Standards for green open spaces embedded in some planning frameworks further state the right for all to a common good. Yet, evidence shows that this common right is not always met. Within the current context of advanced and neoliberal capitalism, green areas are sometimes used as an added financial value for real estate, thus increasing restrictions to their free access and full utilization. In developing countries with young democracies, such as Brazil, this process implies another significant factor of social inequality insofar the restricted access to nature by the poorest people means also diminished food safety and the jeopardizing of certain cultural practices. In developed countries, loss of land for food production and movements reclaiming the right to the city by squatting unoccupied open spaces to initiate community gardens demonstrates that the access to green spaces is also problematic, although in different ways if compared to developing countries. This chapter contributes to this topic by discussing the inequality in the provision of green spaces in informal settlements and social housing development in Brazil, as well as in the globalized north. The chapter concludes with recommendations to enhance democracy through a just provision of nature in cities.