Thinking about urban viaduct areas and their use as housing in Brazilian cities.

Abstract

This text is based on the fact that the viaduct areas constitute nowadays the shelter and the income source of one parcel of the urban population of great Brazilian cities. It is intended, at first, to trace a picture of habitation situation in contemporary Brazil, regarding matters related to local production and its reach. Next, through an investigation about the characteristics of local habitation demand and its impacts over urban, it is intended to approach a very important aspect that hasn’t been deeply researched, which is the destination to be given to these people, considering the incapability of the government to reduce the rural-to-urban migration and the process of social and economic exclusion, mainly in the urban area occupied by the poorer people,under the viaducts. Having some experiences nurtured for over an year of work as starters, such as those along the homeless communities, developed by the Office of Integration of the Department of Architecture and Urbanism of the Pontifical University Catholic of Minas Gerais - PUC Minas, the Pastoral de Rua of the Archdiocese of Belo Horizonte, and Program Reproductive POLOS of Citizenship of the Law school of the Federal University of Minas Gerais - UFMG; the article intends to evaluate the possibilities to consolidate the occupation of these populations in the areas of viaducts in a sustainable way, in order to diminish the social exclusion and make it as a possible income source. The objective of the article is to show the social, economic and legal viability of the inclusion of this population in the areas of viaducts and that this achievement could be a real. Therefore, we will demonstrate the ways and the strategies that are able to consolidate the new ways of use of these areas, including among them, the habitational use. t last, it is pointed that restrictions of ideological and cultural character weigh much more than theeconomic and technological ones.