Eustógio Wanderley Correia Dantas

Vulnerabilidade socioambiental do baixo curso da bacia hidrográfica do Rio Cocó, Fortaleza-CE

The following study is about the vulnerability environmental, social and socio environmental of down progress of Coco rivers watershed, at Fortaleza-CE. The methodology has been based in the use of Geographic Information Systems to the preparation and integration of geology maps, geomorphology, vegetation, vegetation, urban infrastructure and economic and social information with the view to get the natural vulnerability, environmental, social and finally the socio environmental. The results indicate that the environments of high environmental vulnerability coexist with the high social vulnerability, expanding the socio environmentals problems of those spaces. The vulnerability mapping aims to contribute to the urban-environmental planning of watershed down progress and this sense the Geoinformation System has been primordial to itself spatialization.

Veraneio marítimo na metrópole: o caso de Aquiraz, Ceará-Brasil

The modern maritime practices, especially the summer vacations, represent new possibilities to come near the society of the sea, highlighting the coastal area a priority for leisure and living of the populations of major cities. This way, the growth urbanization process becomes a dialectically linked to the spread of modern maritimidade. To understand this process, will be study the case of expansion of the summer sea toward the coastal area of Aquiraz The point is to understand the influence of Metropolis in the dilution of the summer vacations sea in the space perceived as the coastline, highlights the areas of beach, entered the urban space of the metropolitan region of Fortaleza. People who summer vacation, the real estate business, and the public power municipal and state social subjects are involved in the process of creating an urban morphology discontinuous, characterized by urban divisions city and by clusters of second homes. There is, in these terms, to increase the value of coastal areas as condition to the expansion of the Metropolis.

Modern Maritime Practices in the Tropics

The intent of the first chapter is to understand the slow, gradual process of the incorporation of the sea into society, which we call the construction of maritimity in the tropics. This is understood as a group of collective representations, which on the one hand motivates the approximation of society in relation to the sea; on the other justifies the logic of territorial planning by generating flows and producing forms which directly impact the logic of contemporary urbanization of beach zones in the tropics. The contribution offered in this analysis consists in pondering such a phenomenon, as more than a result of external influences. Based on the Brazilian example, it is possible to glimpse the kind of territorial order which results from the filtering through which the local elite arranges the maritime practices invented in the West, with implications for instituting neighboring practices. Thus, the idea of the mere transposition of these practices to the tropics is criticized, denoting a diverse and representative image of how the societies in focus adapt them to their own social and natural environment. This analysis allows for reflection on the importance that the sea and maritime have acquired nowadays in tropical and developing countries, allowing one to deal with representative characteristics of the Brazilian model. In summary, from the representation of the group of countries one can note the following: (a) the importance of national tourism in the process of giving value to beach zones and putting in check the models evidencing the dependence of tourism flows on the socioeconomic and technological transformations undertaken in the West; (b) the strength of the demand of the wealthy classes in relation to which the desire for the sea leads to the implementation of a logic of territorial planning by giving way to a group of practices which are close to the Western model. The consideration of maritimity in the terms presented reveals a complex image of tropical countries, where the local groups which establish relationships with the sea are strongly influenced by the Western model and the analysis of which cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between internal-traditional maritimity and a external-modern one. Maritimity is about a phenomenon of society, the boundaries of which are not clear.

Tropism, the Biggest Myth of Tourism in the Tropics

Taking the term, tropism as a basis, borrowed from the biological sciences and used by the Geography of Tourism in the figurative sense, meaning data derived from an elementary relation to an external cause, it is used as an approach to enable an understanding of the phenomenon of incorporation of the developing countries into touristic activity. Based on the bibliography constructed from the end of the 1960s up to more recent works, a significant group of researchers have exerted and exert effort in the sense of discerning motivational elements for the amplification of the touristic flows on an international scale and its unfolding in the tropics. In the widest sense, there are two main approaches which are called here the “socio-economic and technological” approach and “symbolic” approach. These approaches allow the phenomenon of touristic consolidation in developing countries to be understood. First, the socioeconomic and technological approach, based on understanding the transformations which took place in developed countries, specifically in the social, economic, and technological domains, to justify the institution of mass tourism in developed countries, based on its amplification on an international scale, and its unfolding in the tropics. Second, the “symbolic” approach focuses the analysis on the level of representations, giving evidence of a change of mentality of westerners regarding coastal spaces, responsible in turn for giving new meaning to the tropics as a touristic destination. In summary, two different kinds of approaches are presented and paradoxically, both take as a starting point the maxim that they are a phenomenon derived from external forces coming from developed countries and strongly affecting the tropics, developing countries. Based on this study, we intend to ponder this unanimity. Supported by the bibliography related to the theme, a complex scene is presented in which tourism is another result of socioeconomic, symbolic transformations which have occurred at the local level. Thus, a characteristic image is indicated of countries which are less affected by the flow of international tourists, in relation to which the national tourist flow is preponderant. In a broad sense, a reflection is presented to revisit the greatest myth of the Geography of Tourism, tropism. In virtue of the modernization process of developing countries, understanding the dynamic of international tourism as simply linked to the socioeconomic, technological and symbolic transformations which occurred in developed countries means a reduction in the size and amplitude of the problem. In the case of Brazil, the issue is viewed as extremely concerning.

Tropical Coastal–Maritime Cities

In considering the characteristics of contemporary coastal cities, the need for a rereading of the methodological, theoretical outlines used in the analysis of the urban in the tropics is highlighted. The seafront of these cities, the forgotten and neglected part of their geography, is taken up again in the outline, a vis-a-vis filtering of modern maritime practices by the wealthier classes: of the maritime resorts, of the effect of the trend of living by the beach, and of coastal tourism associated with sunbathing and real estate projects. In summary, it deals with the phenomenon of building the aforementioned cities in time and of denoting the representative movement of cities that in the past were turned to the interior and which, in contemporaneity, have gradually turned to the sea and as an unfolding of the modern maritime practices. Metaphorically, it addresses the characterization of coastal–interior cities becoming coastal–maritime cities at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. With the implementation of modern maritime practices, the beach zones of the tropical coastal cities were rediscovered. If before, the sea had been eclipsed, now the curtains are being drawn back to reveal its totality. The city and its citizens rediscovered the forgotten part of its geography and found shelter in the tradition of the studies undertaken, specifically those rejecting the setting of the sea looking rather to the continental area and in consonance with a focus on the continental cities, matrixes of urban knowledge. The characterization of coastal cities as maritime, in interaction with and in an intense relationship with the sea, imposes itself as one of the fundamental variables in the construction of a theory of cities, which permits an understanding of the constitution of an urban network, parallel to the coastal zone and in relation to the capital cities. These become coastal–maritime cities, specializing both in the reception of the flow of tourists, as in their distribution in their area of influence. Thus, the logic of ordering the territory parallel to the coastal zone is centered on the dialectic pair of airport–coastal highways which currently characterizes them as touristic cities.

Tourism Development Policies in the Brazilian Northeast

From the concrete perspective of capturing the focus on the metropolises, (Fortaleza, Natal, Recife and Salvador), of the most dynamic northeastern Brazilian states (Bahia, Ceara, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte), the process of intense urbanization of the beach zones is associated with meeting the demands for leisure activities, inserted in the dominion of modern maritime practices. Their repercussions propel the aforementioned cities regarding their relationships to the sea. Leisure is thus presented as the delineating element of the modernization process of the cities, taking on a characterization in the dominance of the coasts whose unfolding converges on the surrounding region. Thus it projects a rationality of metropolitan character, associated to the metropolitan region and more specifically to the coastal municipalities which compose it. As a consequence, the idea of touristic metropolization is spread, justified by: (a) regional public policies (Prodetur I, Prodetur II and Prodetur Nacional) as well as national ones (Growth Acceleration Program—PAC and (b), private investments in the real estate market, the strength of which is associated to coastal tourism and maritime resorts. Consequently, one sees the passage of a social and political imaginary in a food producing region which suffers the perverse impacts of Nature (a justification for industrialization policies), to the evidence of a positive image of the semi-arid regions that evaluates investments in agribusiness and coastal tourism, indicated herein as an innovative variable and the enhancing keynote of the urbanization undertaken since the beginning of maritime resorts. The aforementioned maritime practices hugely impact the coastal landscape of northeastern cities, explaining the tone of marked modernization in the metropolises studied and their metropolitan regions. According to this, one understands the logic of dispersed urbanization guided by: (a) linearity, dictated by the dynamic to run parallel to the coastal zone, with a minimal width; (b) fragmentation, characteristic of noncontinuous urbanization and consequently associated to some pieces of coastal, metropolitan land; (c) seasonality, reflecting the use derived from the practice of appropriating beach zones at certain times of the year: the tourist high season, and that of resort tourism over a longer period and that is instituted as occasional and not permanent. It is concluded that the coastal city of the past is losing strength. The emerging metropolis imposes itself as it incorporates the beach zones of the metropolitan region in its geography. Understanding this phenomenon imposes the need to comprehend the hodiernal dynamic of giving value to the coast as a space of leisure and of tourism. The users, beach lovers, are a variable force outlining a new world, based on multiple scales. There are those who live in the metropolis and from there, fulfill their dreams of having a second home in other coastal municipalities (autochthon maritime resort). Others are travelers who are excited to see the maritime stops of Ceara (coastal tourism). Confused with tourists are the resort tourists, who are anxious to reside occasionally at the beach and also in the metropolis (autochthon maritime resort). The state invests in infrastructure and policies to attract the penultimate group. Nothing of this kind has been considered for the last group. However, it is worth highlighting that they also benefit from the touristic infrastructure; their numbers are increasing (coming from other states in Brazil and abroad) giving a foundation for the emergence of local and international real estate projects.