FROM RESPONSE TO PREVENTION: INTERFACES BETWEEN DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT AND URBAN PLANNING

Abstract

In the recent decades, disasters have become an even more often present subject in the everyday life of populations from several regions, demonstrating a significant increase not just in terms of frequency and intensity, but also showing the huge damage caused by their impacts. In the national context the disasters risk management, historically, prioritized the action of response, so that even the legislative process or the public policies presented typically responsive characteristics, which added to the fact that the matter in question was equally disregarded by the urban agenda, then been added to the vulnerability of the Brazilian cities to the socioenvironmental catastrophes. However, some events with catastrophic aspects which have succeeded each other in the transition from the first to the second decade of the XXI century were as a sort of systemic irritation, once they have raised a political reply which came out with the approval of the Federal Law nº 12.608/2012. The referred legislation in connection with the City Statute conform the urban right means to the principles of protection and prevention, so that the land use ordination and control should avoid the exposure of the population to disasters risk. As subjective as it may be, to the legislative advance and the new urban politics reorientation, some challenges establish themselves. The discontinuity of the urban public policies and the budget cuts are setbacks that need to be confronted so that the cities resiliency can be really achieved.