Cities and the Demo-Climatic Transition in Brazil

Abstract

The article discusses the challenges for planning and public policies in terms of adapting Brazilian cities to the future dynamics of climate transition and population transitions (demographic, epidemiologic, urban and mobility). The recursive relationship between such transitions will be decisive in defining how Urban Socio-environmental Systems, which include their populations in different sizes, densities, intraurban distributions and compositions, and the environmental, socioeconomic, morphological and functional characteristics of the cities, will have to adapt in the coming decades. The article initially discusses the characteristics of the population and climate transitions, their relationship with the modernization process, and the challenges that they represent to the adaptation of Urban Socio-environmental Systems. Next, the concept of Demo-climatic Transition is discussed as the recognition of the endogenous nature of the relationship between population transitions and global environmental changes, specifically climate change. Finally, a conceptual model for adapting Urban Socio-environmental Systems to the challenges of the Demo-climatic Transition is proposed, having as its axis the increases in urban adaptive capacity and resilience, and the construction of planning capacity and public policies in the short, medium and long term. In this context, planning, as the bridge between Policy and scientific knowledge in addition to local traditional knowledge, is a key instrument to enhance the resilience and adaptive capacity of Urban Socio-environmental Systems as a response to the climate emergency.