Metabolism and Urban Configuration: Dialogues between Ecological Footprint and Space Syntax in Teresina – PI.
Spatial Syntax, Ecological Footprint, Urban Metabolism, Urban Configuration.
The research explores the evaluation of urban metabolism methodological tools for urban design and planning in Teresina, the capital of Piauí/Brazil. By assuming that the urban form is a way of interpreting society, it is understood that aspects of urban dynamics can be read through a morphological approach. The objective, based on these premises, is to investigate the association between configurational techniques, analyzed through the Space Syntax perspective (Theory of Social Logic of Space), and metabolic tools, discussed according to the Ecological Footprint, to provide subsidies for a better understanding of the interdependent relationships in human settlements. The approaches are contrasted in layers, intending to comprehend their intersections. For that, a diachronic syntactic analysis of the urban expansion of the settlement is performed, through axial and segment maps, employing topological and geometrical variables. Subsequently, in consolidated sectors within the urban fabric, the Ecological Footprint is calculated based on four axes: electricity, water consumption, solid waste generation, and fossil fuels. The results obtained according to the confrontation between all measures and the dialogue with the approaches allow us to understand the articulations between the morphological/configurational and metabolic layers, reinforcing the role of scale and inter-part relationships between the constituent elements of the city. To a certain extent, the resources consumed and the waste generated by a given population that occupies a sector with its spatial characteristics in a city can, to a certain degree, be inferred according to the spatial characteristics.