Urban sustainability: a methodological proposal for analysis and classification of cities

Abstract

Urban sprawl manifests in an unbalanced and widespread manner, with effects and processes that can be harmful and with damage and devaluation to the environment. Urban sustainability emerges as a need to reduce the problems and socioeconomic and environmental impacts on the urban environment and, consequently, establish a harmonious relationship between the natural and the urban, seeking to share human actions and the conservation of natural resources. This article is a clipping of a doctoral dissertation developed with the UFCG Postgraduate Program in Natural Resources, and aims to propose a model to evaluate the sustainability of cities, based on the typologies of cities proposed by Rydin ( 2007) from a systemic evaluation that contemplates the conditions of the urban expansion process of the geographic space, in the context of the cities of Paraíba. To build the model, a literature review and a survey of consolidated urban indicators were performed. The model proposes to analyze the sustainability of cities, from a set of social, environmental and economic indicators, guided by parameters and analysis criteria that allow to fit cities in the typologies: Green City, Limited City, Fair City, Ecologically Modern City, City with Local Social Responsibility and Economic Development, Ecologically Fair City, Sustainable City.