Discoloration and fungal growth on three fiber cement formulations exposed in urban,rural and coastal zones

Three formulations of fiber cement were evaluated for fungal colonization and color change after five years of exposure in aging stations located in urban (São Paulo), rural (Pirassununga) and coastal (Rio Grande) zones in Brazil. The lowest color change and fungal colonization were registered in Rio Grande, which has a temperate climate, as opposed to São Paulo and Pirassununga, which are tropical. The highest fungal colonization was recorded in São Paulo, one of the most air polluted cities in Brazil. Pirassununga samples had an intermediate fungal colonization, in spite of showing the highest color change with visible dark spots on the surfaces. These spots were identified as cyanobacteria, which significantly contributed to the darkening of the specimens. The fiber cement formulation, varying in proportion of organic fibers such as poly (vinyl alcohol) and cellulose, was less significant for fungal bioreceptivity than the characteristics of the exposure site. The most frequent fungal genus found in the tropical climate, in both urban and rural zones, and the main one responsible for the higher records in São Paulo, was Scytalidium sp. which was registered for the first time on this building material in Brazil.     

The Rio/São Paulo Extended Metropolitan Region: A quest for global integration

This paper explores whether the Rio/São Paulo Extended Metropolitan Region, an area with 36 million and accounting for one-third of Brazil's GNP, can successfully integrate into the global economy. Analysis of private investment projects in different sub-regions over the period 1995–2002 suggests that most of the investments are in high-tech or average technology rather than in low technology projects. Decentralization into the Paraiba Valley appears to be taking place rapidly. However, in the region as a whole, severe imbalances between the Rio and the São Paulo remain, and these are an obstacle to the region's attempt to climb up the global urban hierarchy rankings.     

Lead in saliva from lead-exposed and unexposed children

Introduction

Whole blood is used for diagnosis of lead exposure. A non-invasive method to obtain samples for the biomonitoring of lead contamination has become a necessity. This study 1) compares the lead content in whole saliva samples (Pb-saliva) of children from a city with no reported lead contamination (Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo State, Brazil) and children of a region notoriously contaminated with lead (Bauru, São Paulo State, Brazil), and 2) correlates Pb-saliva with the lead content in the enamel microbiopsy samples (Pb-enamel) in the case of these two populations.

Methods

From a population of our previous study that had included 247 children (4- to 6-year-old) from Ribeirão Preto, and 26 children from Bauru, Pb-saliva was analyzed in 125 children from Ribeirão Preto and 19 children from Bauru by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS). To correlate Pb-saliva with Pb-enamel, we used Pb-enamel data obtained in our previous study. The Mann-Whitney test was employed to compare the Pb-saliva data of the two cities. Pb-saliva and Pb-enamel values were then Log₁₀ transformed to normalize data, and Pb-saliva and Pb-enamel were correlated using Pearson's correlation coefficient.

Results

Median Pb-saliva from the Ribeirão Preto population (1.64 μg/L) and the Bauru population (5.85 μg/L) were statistically different (p < 0.0001). Pearson's correlation coefficient for Log₁₀ Pb-saliva versus Log₁₀ Pb-enamel was 0.15 (p = 0.08) for Ribeirão Preto and 0.38 (p = 0.11) for Bauru.

Conclusions

A clear relationship between Pb-saliva and environmental contamination by lead is shown. Further studies on Pb-saliva should be undertaken to elucidate the usefulness of saliva as a biomarker of lead exposure, particularly in children.     

Determination of anthropogenic and biogenic compounds on atmospheric aerosol collected in urban, biomass burning and forest areas in São Paulo, Brazil

This study was conducted at three sites of different characteristics in São Paulo State: São Paulo (SPA), Piracicaba (PRB) and Mata Atlântica Forest (MAT). PM₁₀, n-alkanes, pristane and phytane, PAHs, water-soluble ions and biomass burning tracers like levoglucosan and retene, were determined in quartz fiber filters. Samplings occurred on May 8th to August 8th, 2007 at the MAT site; on August 15th to 29th in 2007 and November 10th to 29th in 2008 at the PRB site and, March 13th to April 4th in 2007 and August 7th to 29th in 2008 at the SPA site.Aliphatic compounds emitted biogenically were less abundant at the urban sites than at the forest site, and its distribution showed the influence of tropical vascular plants. Air mass transport from biomass burning regions is likely to impact the sites with specific molecular markers.The concentrations of all species were variable and dependent of seasonal changes. In the most dry and polluted seasons, n-alkane and cation total concentrations were similar between the megacity and the biomass burning site. PAHs and inorganic ion abundances were higher at São Paulo than Piracicaba, yet, the site influenced by biomass burning seems to be the most impacted by the organic anion abundance in the atmosphere. Pristane and phytane confirm the contamination by petroleum residues at urban sites; at the MAT site, biological activity and long range transport of pollutants might influence the levels of pristane.     

Ozone precursors for the São Paulo Metropolitan Area

Ozone represents the main atmospheric pollutant in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area (SPMA). In this region, its concentration exceeds the national air quality standards for several days out of the year. Ozone is a secondary pollutant and is a product of VOCs, NO_x, and sunlight. Thus, it is very difficult to elaborate efficient strategies for its reduction. Computational simulations may provide an interesting alternative to evaluate the many factors that affect ozone formation. In this study, the trajectory model OZIPR was used together with the SAPRC chemical mechanism to determine the incremental reactivity scale for VOCs in the SPMA. VOC input data were obtained from two campaigns that were performed in the studied area in 2006. Values for CO, NO_x, and meteorological parameters were obtained by automatic monitors. Five base-cases were created to verify the variation in maximum ozone concentration and thus determine the ozone formation potential of each VOC. NO_x and VOC emissions were independently and simultaneously reduced by 5, 10, 20, and 30% to verify variations in ozone formation. With the simulator output data, ozone isopleths charts were generated for the city of São Paulo. Analysis of the obtained results shows that the most frequent compounds found among the ten main ozone precursors in São Paulo, using the reactivity scales created from the five base-cases, were: formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, propene, isoprene, cis-2-butene, and trans-2-butene, with formaldehyde being always the main ozone precursor compound. The simulations also show that an efficient strategy to decrease ozone concentrations in the SPMA would be to reduce total VOC emissions. The same strategy is not possible for NO_x, as the reduction of these pollutants would increase ozone concentrations.     

Modeling study of the aspect ratio influence on urban canopy energy fluxes with a modified wall-canyon energy budget scheme

The influence of the aspect ratio (building height/street canyon width) and the mean building height of cities on local energy fluxes and temperatures is studied by means of an Urban Canopy Model (UCM) coupled with a one-dimensional second-order turbulence closure model. The UCM presented is similar to the Town Energy Balance (TEB) model in most of its features but differs in a few important aspects. In particular, the street canyon walls are treated separately which leads to a different budget of radiation within the street canyon walls. The UCM has been calibrated using observations of incoming global and diffuse solar radiation, incoming long-wave radiation and air temperature at a site in São Paulo, Brazil. Sensitivity studies with various aspect ratios have been performed to assess their impact on urban temperatures and energy fluxes at the top of the canopy layer. In these simulations, it is assumed that the anthropogenic heat flux and latent heat fluxes are negligible. Results show that the simulated net radiation and sensible heat fluxes at the top of the canopy decrease and the stored heat increases as the aspect ratio increases. The simulated air temperature follows the behavior of the sensible heat flux.     

Transforming the modern Latin American city: Robert Moses and the International Basic Economic Corporation

In 1950, Lineu Prestes, the then mayor of São Paulo, commissioned the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC), a commercial corporation headquartered in New York and owned by Nelson Rockefeller, to draw up a detailed report concerning the general planning of public works for the municipality of São Paulo. The urban planner Robert Moses was appointed Director of Studies and another 10 advisors were appointed to work in the ‘Program of Public Improvements’. The improvement plan for São Paulo was not an isolated initiative among those developed by IBEC, but it was very different from the other planning studies that had been conducted to date in that it was actually a consultative assignment. While performing technical studies, IBEC also identified opportunities for American companies to operate in Brazil; hence, the plan aroused great controversy. This paper seeks to establish how the Program emerged from the political and economic context of the post‐Second World War period in relation to Nelson Rockefeller’s activities in Latin America and Brazil, and it seeks to analyse, from the point of view of urban planning, the role played by the Program in the planning and development of the city of São Paulo.     

Idealizing Brazilian cities: Their master plans from 1960 through 2015

This article discusses the Brazilian city through the perspective of its written idealisation, both in the format of Master Plans and their resulting legislations. The analysis reflects ideas expressed by local society, legislators and urban planners, recognizing that a myriad of intermediate agents play specific roles and confirming the main features in the way the city is understood. The discussion is based on a selection of 26 Master Plans for the ten largest cities in Brazil between 1960 and 2015. This timeframe reveals distinct phases constructed with different priorities and ways of idealising Brazilian cities and, by extension, those on the Latin American continent. The study suggests an increase in legal complexity, expansion of municipal responsibilities and the maintenance of physical-territorial priorities as the main instruments of urban management. Many of the themes observed in the selected Plans also indicate an overlapping symbiosis between the comprehensive Master Plans themselves and the laws for urban land use they encompass. The impressive expansion of responsibilities adopted by local governments, as well as holistic aspirations, has made achievement of the ideal city more difficult than ever. Efforts to democratise urban land access and appropriate use have gained importance in the composition of the ideal city; however, the access of the low-income population to proper land and basic infrastructure and services still relies on controversial and structural changes. Analysis of the desired city – here considered as the idealised city – during the selected period reveals a strategic absence of emergent features and points to both optimistic and pessimistic approaches.     

Brazilian city planners,American city planning? New perspectives on urban planning in Rio de Janeiro, 1930–1945

This article analyses the connections between the ideas and principles of American city planning from 1920 with those articulated by Brazilian city planners in the 1930s and implemented by the administration of the City of Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of Brazil, notably during the period of the Estado Novo [The New State] from 1937 to 1945. In a period characterized by the centralization of political power and the concentration of decision‐making in the hands of the president and the state, the City of Rio de Janeiro undertook a series of restructuring projects which utilized new forms of administration and organization. This article explores the links between urban planning in Brazil and the USA that were a notable feature of these projects. It examines particular requirements set down in city plans, city planning commissions and funding for urban activities, such as ‘excess condemnation’, by focusing upon articles and books written by four Brazilian engineers and proposals put forward by the American City Planning Institute, detailed in the proceedings of the National Conference on City Planning, in the periodical, City Planning and works by affiliated authors.     

Bioclimatic and vernacular design in urban settlements of Brazil

Brazilian regional traditional architectural features are analyzed, especially with regard to the new emerging vernacular of self-built urban settlements. Bioclimatic design is discussed as to its scientific and technical features with respect to the subtropical climate of the city of Campinas in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The main goal of this work is to analyze a specific self-building house phenomenon and its response to climate. From this analysis thermal comfort should be addressed in terms of correct architectural elements. An appropriate new architecture for the urban poor should be based on bioclimatic design principles and the positive elements of the new urban vernacular.     

Where to for Brazil's Cities? Citizen Empowerment or Global Marketing?

An awakening interest in public space in Brazilian cities is emphasising the value of existing civic areas. Guilherme Wisnik , a critic, curator and professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, looks at the history and potential future of Brazil's urban spaces. He highlights how despite the introduction of innovative Modernist design in the mid-20th century, which forged ‘a new relationship between architecture, urbanism and landscape design’, more recently the country's cities have been subject to the vicissitudes of market and political forces.     

Stages of a state: from São Paulo's Teatro São José to the Teatro Municipal, 1854–1911

This article uses the cases of the Teatro São José and the Teatro Municipal to explain how and why performance space in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, became an increasingly public issue between 1854 and 1911. Specifically, I analyse the ways in which the notion of the theatre as a public good evolved both in the discourse of paulistas and in the practice of legislation and contract negotiation. This article thus interprets planning history as a history of ideas and assumes cultural policy-making to encompass both government and non-government actors. To that end, utilizing legislation, government records, architectural plans, and the press as sources, I argue that theatres' ‘publicness’ in São Paulo was rationalized along three lines: their potential accessibility to a broad audience, their visibility, and their high cost. While public spending on the Teatro São José was justified on the grounds of economic development and moral and civic education, the Teatro Municipal garnered support as a project of Progressive Era urban reform that sought to affirm São Paulo's place in the civilized world.     

Municipalities and the “new” internationalism: Cautionary notes from Canada

This study attempts to assess the impact of municipal internationalism for cities and towns involved in more comprehensive types of global interchange. Focusing on two Canadian-sponsored linkages — involving the cities of Lethbridge (Alberta) and Ica (Peru), and Toronto (Ontario) and São Paulo (Brazil), respectively — the study supports the findings of earlier research which reveals that intensive municipal exchange can pay real dividends to the participants involved. At the same time, however, closer examination of exchange dynamics in each case shows that the process can also produce certain unintended — and negative — consequences not previously identified in the literature. These, in turn, appear to affect not only the quality of specific projects, but the continued vitality of the exchange process itself — thus limiting the overall benefits of the phenomenon.     

An evaluation method for school building design at the preliminary phase with optimisation of aspects of environmental comfort for the school system of the State São Paulo in Brazil

This study presents a method for evaluating and optimising environmental comfort parameters of school buildings during the preliminary stages of design. In order to test the method, 39 existing public school building designs in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, had their plans analysed and characterised in relation to their influence on environmental comfort. Four aspects of comfort were considered: thermal, acoustic, natural lighting and functionality. Since the evaluation method is based on preliminary design information only, parameters that otherwise would be analysed quantitatively had to be assessed by interviews with specialists using a qualitative five-point semantic scale. For each aspect of comfort, possible design solutions were rated from 0 to 1, according to the fuzzy set theory. The final mean grades for each comfort stated the building's average performance. Although conflicts between different comfort parameters are apparent, results show that multi-criteria optimisation can be applied as a design tool during the creative process. Maximisation of various aspects of comfort simultaneously was shown to be impossible, but compromise solutions could be found.     

Why there? Developers' rationale for building social housing in the urban periphery in Latin America

Inadequate housing has become endemic to Latin American cities for over six decades. All that has changed has been who is going where. In the 1960s, the rural poor who came to the city solved their housing needs by building their own informal settlements on peri-urban lands. Today, the urban poor relocate to peri-urban housing complexes built by the private sector with state subsidies. Why have these new housing units for low-income households been built in peri-urban areas? This paper examines some of the mechanisms behind the location of the urban poor in cities, with a specific focus on the role developers have played in the construction of affordable housing in peri-urban areas of Brazil and, Mexico. The paper explores these mechanisms through interviews with affordable housing developers. We found that economies of scale – and not land prices – explain developers' preference for building in peripheral areas. Initial savings that accrue to developers due to lower land prices in the periphery are offset by the cost of having to build basic onsite infrastructure. Plus, large lots – which are available almost exclusively in urban peripheries – enable developers to achieve significant cost savings because these large lots make it possible for developers to build more than 500 units. In addition, weaker municipal regulations and fewer bidders, both of which are typical for projects in difficult-to-access peripheral locations, make for a shorter and easier approval process for these large housing projects.     

Research perspective: Brazil

Continuing our occasional series, the former Housing Programme Director of IPT (Technological Research Institute of São Paulo) explains how history has made the State institute the leader of the building research effort in the country, and how in some respects it is required to do too many things at once. It must also find a Brazilian answer to the problems of a country where half the population is under 18 years of age and 67 per cent of the people live in the cities. Dr Maffei recently left IPT to be a Visiting Professor at São Paulo University.     

Sustainability: A Clarion Call for a New Approach

Looking beyond the tickbox approach of green-rating systems that apply North American climatic criteria to a Brazilian context, Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves , a professor of environmental design at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Sâo Paulo, advocates a more far-reaching way forward for sustainability in Brazil.     

Smarter than Smart: Rio de Janeiro's Flawed Emergence as a Smart City

“Smart cities” grew out of the realization that North American models of suburban development and central business district decline needed to be challenged with new paradigms. This movement began in the 1990s with ideas centered on smart growth and new urbanism. While initially restricted to small, wealthy cities, the ideas that emerged during this period combined with a vertiginous growth in information technologies to create software-driven urban managerial tools for major cities. The increasing “technologization” of urban systems that automatically replicate spatial dynamics has been on the agenda of urban scholars for some time. However, the relatively new paradigms of “whole system” implementation in large urban centers has not been the subject of robust critical engagement. The aim of this paper is to examine critically the implementation and functioning of two “smart cities” systems in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as part of the city's broader preparations for hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.     

Right to the city and human mobility transition: The case of São Paulo

This paper discusses the question about the right to the city and the influences of the dispute for the city on urban mobility, using São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, as a study case. We present the concept of the human mobility transition, which relates to the idea of large shifts in human mobility dynamics that have affected the constitution and development of urban settlements, the structure of the urban form, and social networks. We then argue that the latest stage of this transition is heavily influenced by the fact that cities have become both the arena for and the object of the political struggle between unsustainable economic growth and sustainable human development. Health consequences of the dispute for the city in the context of urban mobility are discussed. Final section uses the case of São Paulo to illustrate these arguments, focusing on changes that occurred from the end of the 19th century onwards.     

Population density patterns in Port-au-Prince,Haiti: A model of Latin American city?

This paper examines the population density patterns in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by both the monocentric and polycentric models, based on the 2003 census data at the SDE (Section d’énumération) and district levels. The regression results show a poor fitting power of monocentric functions, and improved but less than satisfactory R² by the polycentric functions. Port-au-Prince bears some resemblance to the Griffin–Ford (1980) model for Latin American cities with its own identity. The city has five zones: (1) a commercial quarter around the city center, (2) a transitional zone with mixed land uses, (3) a high-income residential zone with the best amenities in the southeastern area, (4) a disamenity (squatters) zone with the highest population density in the north area, and (5) another disamenity (squatters) zone with the second highest population density in the south and southwest areas. A regression model validates the five-zone model for Port-au-Prince. This structure is mainly shaped by the absence or lack of institutional enforcement of land use regulations and urban planning.