The Conflicts between the Simplification of Building Regulations and the Challenge of Building Cities for a Changing Climate: The Case of Sao Paulo City

The application of studies of environmental quality of buildings and public spaces into practice and the way the planning of cities will face the climate changing challenge depends strongly on political will and governmental capacity to create appropriate management tools. While countries as Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada adopted continuous updated performance-based Building Codes, Sao Paulo city laws have lost over the last century, almost all the prescriptive construction requirements, which influence the environmental quality of buildings, such as the orientation of facades and the minimum sun hours on the openings. In the Code in effect, parameters as the minimum size of windows or the need to provide openings facing the exterior of buildings, or even the adequate room dimensions according to use were excluded. This paper aims to be critical and to make an alert to Sao Paulo's planners about the risk of building such a complex city not regarding the quality of constructions.