Ensino e pesquisa

Resumo:

The city of São Paulo is the richest city in Brazil, accounting for more than 12% of the national GDP, offering employment opportunities for the countries’ middle class as well as for the poor (IBGE, 2012). As a result, approximate 2 million people live in slums with deficient urban infrastructure (FRANÇA, COSTA, 2012). In the last decade, the increase buying power of the low income families in the big cities of the country has caused a dramatic raise on electricity demand due to the acquisition of domestic appliances, which have proved to become comparable to those of middle class, based on the data gathering in the fieldwork research presented in this paper. Hence, the growth of urban slums in Sao Paulo is associated with the increase of its population density accompanied by an increase of electricity demand, adding pressure on the precarious infrastructure and impoverishing even more the living conditions, due to the accumulation of heat gains in compact irregular and overcrowded housing, agglomerated in informal settlements of poor quality open spaces. In this context, this work examines the environmental challenges of slums in the city of São Paulo, the so called “favelas”, drawing from two cases: “favela Morro da USP”, covering 18.500m² and housing 515 families, and “favela Paraisopolis”, the second biggest in São Paulo, with almost 60.000 inhabitants living over 100 hectares. Field work has shown energy consumption of the slums’ households of around 220kwh/month, the equivalent to the typical figures from the local middle class homes. In addition, the environmental research has identified the potencial of improving internal conditions with bigger openings to higher ventilation rates and shading of roof components.