VIRTUAL Manchester Livable Cities
Abstract
Cantinho do Céu, an informal consolidated settlement on the edge of the Billings Reservoir in São Paulo, illustrates how watershed urbanisation concentrates environmental and climate risk: recurrent flooding, soil erosion, water contamination, heat exposure and the fragility of informal infrastructures. These vulnerabilities are shaped by the long-term consequences of past losses of native Mata Atlântica forest ecosystems and by the ecological pressures placed on the reservoir. This paper examines how territorial pedagogies—pedagogical and spatial inquiry practices applied to real environments—can operate as analytical tools for urbanism, generating situated understandings of socio-environmental dynamics that support climate adaptation and urban-regeneration strategies. Community-engaged pedagogical initiatives led in recent years by in the Billings basin have shown how collaboration with residents, educators, local organisations and São Paulo Municipality’s Mananciais Programme can strengthen environmental perception, territorial awareness and shared responsibility. These experiences have included co-imagining public spaces with community groups, treating the watershed as both a learning ground and a space of collective imagination. Through fieldwork, mapping, drawing and the study of nature-based climate-adaptation possibilities, this close reading revealed how ecological, infrastructural and social tensions converge, shaping both exposure to risk and the area’s potential for resilience. Viewed together, these experiences suggest that territorial pedagogies can operate as urban analytical tools, offering municipalities clearer diagnoses and more grounded bases for intervention. They demonstrate that effective climate adaptation in watershed socially vulnerable territories emerges from close engagement with place, its communities and its ecological possibilities.
Teresa Serrano is a registered architect with over fifteen years of experience in architectural projects and urban design. She is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainability at the University of East London and an affiliate of the UEL Sustainability Research Institute (SRI). Her research focuses on climate change adaptation in architecture and the retrofit of existing urban environments. Teresa also serves as Link Tutor for the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales and has been a visiting lecturer at Kingston University, London Metropolitan University, and Central Saint Martins.
Prof. Dr. Daniela Getlinger is an architect and urbanist, and a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, São Paulo. She holds a professional Master of Architecture from UCLA, and a Master’s and PhD in Urbanism from Mackenzie, with research focused on informal territories, urban social vulnerability, and public policy integration. At Mackenzie, she teaches design and urbanism and participates in research groups such as Innovative Urban Instruments and Social Urbanism, and City, Gender and Early Childhood. She also collaborates on extension projects that connect communities, public authorities, and academia toward socially engaged urban practice.
Prof. Dr. Ana Gabriela Godinho Lima is a Professor and Researcher in the Postgraduate Programme in Architecture and Urbanism at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from FAUUSP, a PhD in Education from FEUSP, and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Hertfordshire. She leads the research projects AGAINST UTILITY [A+U] and Artifacts and Cities at FAU Mackenzie. She co-edited City, Gender and Childhood (2021), awarded by the Institute of Architects of Brazil in 2022. Author of Architects and Architectures in Latin America in the 20th Century, she is recognised for pioneering work on women in architecture and has published extensively.
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Wednesday 17th June, 2026