The design of gated communities in São Paulo metropolitan area

Abstract

This paper has as study object the formation of a kind of residential urban landscape spread in a large number of Brazilian cities, in special those around the Sao Paulo metropolitan area: the gated communities destined to a population with average and high income. The premise that it deals with a type of appropriation of urban ground related since the middle of the 1970‘s when internal adjustments in real estate market were implemented, and to the standards of growth of the São Paulo metropolitan area, specifically its process of dispersion, excites the necessity of identify the characteristics and specially the effects to the rest of the urban space that are been spread in terms never seen. Twenty eight enterprises launched between 1994 and 2005 in the metropolitan area are analyzed. The set of case studies involves from communities settled in the rural zones to the urban areas; in common is the fact that are enterprises created by a private entrepreneur to subdivide an only one private property, and the management of the internal space by proper codes. The analysis was developed in two scales: at a first moment, it was restricted in the internal spaces, appointing the planning methods and the distribution standards of the open areas, the volumetric occupations, and the leisure equipments; in the following one, were analyzed the neighbor landscape, identifying the main characteristics of the fabric urban and the not constructed natural environment.