Zonas de proteção ambiental e projetos rodoviários: pressões e transformações entre a zona de proteção ambiental 9 e o projeto rodoviário da av. Moema Tinoco da Cunha Lima, Natal/RN

Abstract

This thesis approached the theme of the socioenvironmental attributes of environmental protection zones which affect and are affected by road projects inserted in metropolitan dynamics. The motivation for this work came from observing recurring occupations in environmental protection zones (EPZs) by road projects, which implied in the suppression of relevant socioenvironmental attributes. More precisely, it was identified in the 2000s that the EPZ 9, located in the northern zone of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, when receiving fractions of the road project for the Moema Tinoco da Cunha Lima avenue, with metropolitan incidencies, generated many socioenvironmental conflicts with potential to compromise the objectives of its protection. In the face of this problem, it was questioned: how were the socioenvironmental attributes considered in instruments of urban planning and in road projects which had some kind of incidence over environmental protection zones? It was assumed that, even though advances were observed in the protection of EPZs in the scope of territorial planning, the socioenvironmental attributes of these zones were not taken in consideration regarding their urbanistic dimension, with their specific aspects at road project level, nor their respective effects in the process of sociospatial transformations impulsed by the reffered project being taken into consideration. This resulted in the compromising of the protection objectives of those EPZs and the success of implementing urban mobility projects. Considering what was exposed, the object of study of this thesis was delimited by the socioenvironmental attributes of the EPZ 9 related to the strokes of the road project, legal framework and urban dynamic. The objective was to comprehend the approach towards the socioenvironmental attributes of the EPZ 9 in the road project of the Moema Tinoco avenue, starting from the urbanistic dimension of the road project, urban and environmental legislation and the transformations in soil occupation and use in the EPZ 9. In the theoretic-methodological field, the main references are the studies of Raquel Tardin (2008), as to support the analysis of the socioenvironmental attributes, and Jan Gehl (2013) as a basis for the analysis of the road project in its human dimension. Both analyze the space from the relation between man and nature. It was evidenced that the basis and objectives through which the EPZ and the road project were elaborated are incompatible and contradictory to each other and demand articulated work, which is historically inexpressive in the legal and urban management fields in Brazil. Moreover, the lack of consideration of these structures as integrated systems in the production of urban spaces, in light of the socioenvironmental function of the property, generated various distinctly identified conflicts in the phases of conception, implementation and consolidation of the road project. This mismatch referred repeatedly to the frailty of environmental spaces for the insertion of roads with an unique typological pattern, which did not dialogue with its socioenvironmental surroundings, which ended up decharacterizing the environmental spaces as well as compromising the operation of the same road project.