URBAN CLIMATE AS A CLIMATE RISK: CONTRIBUTION OF CLIMATE GEOGRAPHY TO STUDIES ABOUT CITIES 'CLIMATES

Abstract

The studies about climate impacts on urban areas have been seen as an adverse manifestation since the XVII century. This studies evidencied the urban climate as a classic problem to geographic climatology, and currently, it have interpreted as an environmental derivation, that contemplates urban and environmental issues in the same point of view that promotes transformations the natural phenomenon into social problem. This text aims expand this discussion and contribute to discussion of how the urban climate can also be interpreted as a social construction. Based on the approach of geography of climate, the proposal indicates changes in the research questions and in concepts of climate, city and risk. The study was applied to Santos city, on the São Paulo coast. The results indicate that the santista urban climate happens much more because of the relativization and selectivity of natural hazards, than by the disposition of the natural susceptibilities of the urban site. It is to the content-forms of support, mitigation and overcoming built during the historical development, which organize the city in different levels of vulnerability and exposure to natural disasters. This approach help in qualifying the urban climate as a climatic risk, in other words a social construction.