Planning the rural-urban interface under sustainable principles: a methodological proposal

Among the problems that cities face are rapid growth and dynamics in the peripheral and suburban areas of medium size towns, characterized by mixtures of residential neighborhoods and squatters' settlements with wide differences between levels of urbanization and public services. There is also an important flow of commuters, loss of productive and conservational lands and management among several municipalities. Thus the objective is to present a methodological proposal to address the rural-urban interface from a sustainability perspective. To achieve this, six issues were considered: migration and socio-demographic changes, economic growth of the city-region, urban mobility and residential change, settlement morphology and functions, use and depletion of resources and urban and environmental management.