Spatial Representations and Urban Planning
by Gilberto Corso Pereira
1
& Maria Célia Furtado Rocha
2
Urban models are idealized representations of the city, abstractions or
simplifications of reality that seek to describe the urban reality, predict or
plan for the city future. Digital technologies allow both, reading and
analysis of urban realities, and their communication between various social
actors - citizens, organizations, corporations - enabling access and diverse
use of information. Digital representations could be used to amplify public
participation but they also allow the manipulation of public opinion. The
paper argues that the digital representations currently used in Urban
Planning derived from topographical data acquisition must be extended to
represent the social networks that today augment the public space and the
current Urban Planning practices could be closer to the current social
practices and their representations.
Urbanism and Digitization
Cities are complex organizations, to plan and to manage its growth
necessarily involves a series of diverse knowledge and use of sophisticated
tools and processes. The idea of planning the growth or evolution of one
city assumes that you can learn how to anticipate and avoid problems
associated with its urban development. It also requires to know the needs
and demands for public facilities or services - housing, transportation,
sanitation, infrastructure, legislation, etc. - and ways to minimize or correct
these deficiencies. In an increasingly urbanized world the complexity of
variables that influence the analysis to be made increases as urban societies
become more diverse and gain more mobility.
Urban planning is a sophisticated instrument of political power because
1 Federal University of Bahia, Brazil.
2 Federal University of Bahia and PRODEB, Brazil
1