Water urgency: urban interventions in watershed areas

The relations between urban and environmental policies represent a great challenge to the formulation of answers to urban pressures versus environmental preservation. In watershed areas of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, the dimension of this challenge is particularly significant, mainly because the environmental and urban policies face spontaneous and precarious occupation processes in protected areas. This article sets the panorama of the institutionalization of public policies – urban and environmental – in the watershed area of the Billings reservoir, and investigates the case of the city of São Bernardo do Campo, emphasizing the implementation of urban planning tools that integrate housing and environment. It is possible to conclude that the challenges to the recovery of watershed areas go beyond the imposition of legal landmarks. They primordially depend on innovative intervention strategies that involve the civil society and may signal a real transformation of the reality faced by protected drainage basins.