Spatial analysis and municipal management of vacant buildings in Rio de Janeiro with GIS
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Souza, L.
1UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO DE JANEIRO (IPPUR/UFRJ) Email: leandrogs86@gmail.com
Abstract
The city of Rio de Janeiro has experienced great urban dynamics in the last few years, with urban sprawl and densification of occupied areas. The urban policies carried out recently by the local government in housing and transportation – Minha Casa, Minha Vida (MCMV) and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), respectively – have boosted the expansion of the city for new areas. Although the city keep on growing fast, it is possible to find a great number of urban vacant land and buildings in consolidated areas, in places with good offering of public services and urban infrastructure, which are kept unused for a set of reasons, like the industrial decadence or property speculation in real estate market. These vacant properties have a great potential of use, considering the need for a more sustainable city and the social function of urban land, and consists in a problem in many themes (urbanism, environment, health, housing and economics) that must be addressed by efficient urban planning and management, with intelligent solution and land use policies. This work aims the spatial analysis of the vacant lands in the city of Rio de Janeiro, with the structuration of a georeferenced database to understand how and why they are distributed in the territory, combining with other urban information in GIS for the proposition of better use of these areas. It is intended to recover the theoretical and empirical discussion over the notion of urban vacant lands – since there are many different expressions of it, including undisturbed open space, bare derelict land, abandoned structures and brownfields – to proceed with its internal classification used in this work, the urban vacant buildings. It is analyzed the activities of Rio de Janeiro’s municipality concerning the guidelines of urban planning (both by legislation and practical urban projects) and municipal databases regarding the vacant buildings, to understand how the city defines the problem and if it uses GIS or cartography as a tool for its solution. Using data from 2010 Demographic Census from Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statisticts (IBGE), it is done the mapping and a set of analysis using GIS, an instrument with great potential for studying and making possible improved management and propositions for its reuse. Finally, it is presented the variety of possible uses of these instruments by the municipal administration, considering international experience of GIS to manage the vacant land, in order to develop urban vacant policies ensuring better quality of life for the citizens and a more sustainable city.
Keywords
vacant land; territorial management; Rio de Janeiro