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Floods and Flooding ‘Will Be Part of Our Lives,’ Says Brazilian Architect and Urbanist

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By Giovana Fleck

Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil, is going through the worst climate disaster in its history. From April 28 onward, a major part of its territory, about the size of the United Kingdom, has been submerged underwater. The heavy rains soon transformed into violent floods, impacting over 1.4 million people, with at least 100 people confirmed dead, according to reports published May 8. Entering its sixth day of flooding, the state capital, Porto Alegre, is now facing a shortage of drinking water.

Under such critical circumstances, it is crucial to understand how this situation escalated so rapidly and consider how intentional city planning might prevent it from repeating itself. 

Mariana Bernardes is an architect and urbanist from Passo Fundo, in the northern portion of Rio Grande do Sul. The city is also among the 425 out of 497 affected, with floods isolated to certain regions of the city.

Bernardes’ work focuses on humanizing structural problems with planning, technical responsibility, and social commitment. In an interview with Global Voices, she spoke about what could have been done to prevent the floods in Brazil and what can be done as communities look to collective reconstruction.

Global Voices (GV): The floods in southern Brazil demonstrate a series of failures and omissions, especially by the State. How could a humanized view of architecture and urbanism have prevented parts of this ongoing tragedy?

Marina Bernardes (MB): Socio-environmental disasters will become more frequent, as [climate scientists] have been warning for decades. However, Brazilian cities were not prepared to face the climate emergency. I usually say that urban planning went in the opposite direction, considering that our cities increased gray and reduced green. What does it mean?

In a country where public transport is not a priority, people struggle to acquire their own car, and this requires the public administration to invest more and more in the streets. With the increase in asphalt, permeability decreases — the rain that was previously absorbed by the soil, or at least between cobblestones, now needs to run off somewhere. This becomes a serious issue, because the urban drainage system cannot handle the amount of water.

In the same way that we invest highly in gray and asphalt, we invest low in green and nature. In other words, there is a lack of urban parks, rain gardens, infiltration ditches, and retention basins to absorb rainwater, but which receive less attention from public administration than asphalt.

Furthermore, as the government does not invest in housing alternatives for the low-income population. The population has increased, and this commonly leads to building houses in environmentally fragile locations, such as on the banks of rivers. This leads to deforestation, which lowers the capability of water absorption by the soil. As a consequence, river levels rise more quickly, increasing the risk of flooding houses.

Regarding the architecture of houses in floodable areas, we have currently studied the need to think about resilient housing, with materials that withstand water, perhaps houses with two floors — so it is possible to move furniture to the upper floor.

Houses will need to be resilient.

It is difficult to think about living with floods and flooding, but they will be part of our lives; some cities will have to adapt, while others, in fact, will need to migrate to safer terrain. This is why studies involving the region and each of the cities are essential; there is no way to propose a solution without evaluating them one by one.

GV: The governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, is already talking about reconstruction. What should be prioritized in this process?

(MB): The priority must be to rebuild each of the houses so that these people can return to their homes, but with one caution: How will they adapt to face the next disaster?

It is necessary to rethink the architecture of these houses, but not only that, families living in conservation areas need to be relocated so that the wetland forests on the banks of the rivers are revitalized.

Furthermore, from an urban perspective, what investments in green infrastructure and solutions based on nature (SBN) will be adoptedWe cannot continue to have cities without an urban mobility plan, reforestation plan, sustainable urban drainage plan, and disaster contingency plans. Investments should involve a series of initiatives based especially on sustainable cities.

GV: People in vulnerable situations will be the ones most affected by floods and climate catastrophes. How would you include their needs in city designs?

(MB): The most affected people are populations living in at-risk areas, and these are territories normally occupied by women and Black people. It is essential to talk about the protection of these groups, and for this, housing policy needs to be a priority for governments. It is important to remember that housing is a right, and here, we are not talking about precarious houses, which do not guarantee the safety of residents.

How can we talk about the basic right to housing if we don’t move forward with land regularization? It is urgent to implement regularization so that these families are assisted by basic sanitation. Regularization is the process of recognizing these areas as part of the city and thus making it possible to allocate resources.

Talking about participatory processes, do you see good examples of inclusion? Can you mention some?

(MB): It is essential that [regular] people are part of all processes. Whether family relocation, for example, building floodable parks where homes were removed. In architecture, we defend social participation as a design tool. We cannot plan houses without listening to people, and this even involves participation in choosing the land.

Furthermore, it is necessary to include the community in the construction of contingency plans, considering that having basic knowledge about map readings and first actions in an alert situation is the most important thing to have autonomy and face the first moments of the disaster.

Our population has not adapted to this scenario, but there is an urgent need to face it. Contingency plans save lives, but to do so, we must demand that governments allocate resources to expand civil defense, just as we need prepared employees, trained volunteers, and structured shelters.

The question is no longer “Will cities face more rain-related disasters?” but rather “When will the next disaster occur, and how prepared will governments be to anticipate the resolution of these problems?”

This post was previously published on globalvoices.org under a Creative Commons License.

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Photo credit: Toomas Tartes on Unsplash

 

The post Floods and Flooding ‘Will Be Part of Our Lives,’ Says Brazilian Architect and Urbanist appeared first on The Good Men Project.


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