Mobility and vulnerability: rethinking the population-environment relationship in metropolitan spaces

Eduardo Marandola Jr., Population Studies Center, University of Campinas

While the relationship between vulnerability and mobility appears to be scientific common sense, it requires further elaboration. Both terms have been considered in oversimplified ways, nearly always negatively, though mobility, in fact, is ambivalent in terms of promoting risk or protection, and vulnerability is better understood as neutral, as a quality intrinsic to places, persons, spaces. Using the vulnerability-of-place perspective, we seek to explore the population-geographic relationships and meanings which constitute specific neighborhoods of the Campinas Metropolitan Region, Brazil. In these places, there is a given spatial-temporal configuration which permits us to articulate the internal elements (proximity, dangers, family structure, life cycle, migratory history, community, neighborhood, morphology) with external elements (urban network, regional context, socioeconomic formation, culture). This effort is particularly important in view of growing metropolitanization, which places larger populations in a situation of hyper-mobility, and in view of climate changes which will increase hazards in these spaces.