El paisaje hídrico de la Represa Billings: renovación urbana, conflicto socioambiental y vulnerabilidad climática
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article analyses the regeneration of Cantinho do Céu, a consolidated informal settlement on the banks of the Billings Reservoir (São Paulo), understanding the reservoir as a dynamic water landscape: an infrastructure that reshapes territory and produces social and ecological hierarchies. The intervention took place in a context where the Atlantic Forest had been drastically reduced by the construction of the reservoir and the subsequent expansion of precarious urbanisation. The regeneration combined sanitation, slope stabilisation, road improvements, and a linear park that re-established the relationship between the neighbourhood and the water. The analysis articulates two key perspectives: a critique of hydric modernity —which subordinated natural flows to the metropolitan metabolism— and negotiation as a project method capable of intervening without erasing the everyday life of an existing fabric. Local results are evident —reduced contamination and risks, and reorganisation of the urban edge— yet reveal limits: the social costs of resettlement and the inadequacy of localised actions in the face of watershed-scale degradation. In the context of climate emergency, the article proposes scaling policy from neighbourhood to watershed, integrating Nature-based Solutions as living infrastructure that restores ecosystem functions, strengthens resilience, and addresses housing precariousness without displacement.
Source: Bitácora Urbano Territorial
Authors: Daniela Getlinger, Teresa Serrano
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7221825681