Between the beautiful and the fearsome
This is a journey through the marginalized landscapes of the medium-sized Brazilian city of Bauru, located in the state of São Paulo.1 Disregarding the morphology of the valley bottoms, the city expanded,2 turning these spaces into large urban voids or a “Lost Landscape”3 similar to the abandoned railroad on the city’s riverbanks.
Today, abandonment accumulates in Bauru. Abandonment stems from government and public policy, from people moving away, from negligence that makes it acceptable to discard what no longer serves. Over the last few decades, Bauru’s valley bottoms have been assigned a reputation as problematic and unpleasant areas due to the illegal disposal of solid waste, silting up and polluting rivers, deforestation of native vegetation, abandonment of industrial assets, and a lack of security and public infrastructure. These open spaces only appear in the news when they are the protagonists of critical hydrological events and other socio-environmental problems. The news often carries images of the destruction, accidents, and deaths caused by the floods that occur every year.
As a result, the population is unable to establish a connection with the city’s waterways. On the contrary, these places generate distance and a lack of affection, becoming undesirable environments to be avoided and cut off from the city, a phenomenon that is encouraged by the city’s current urban infrastructure. It seems that living with these problems on a daily basis has transformed residents’ feelings of indignation into indifference.
During urban planning, Bauru’s valley bottoms were seen from the macro scale, like a bird flying overhead. Now, we ask: what is happening in these urban meanders? What socio-cultural-political environmental dynamics are developing in these places? What is hidden and marginalized in Bauru’s residual spaces? There is a pulsating life to be revealed, in dialogue with the city’s history and memory, the challenges of the present and the desires for the future. These tensions now need to be reviewed through the lens of the disciplinary field of landscape architecture. This is a moment of transitioning scales from plan to phenomenon.4
This sensitive experience underpins part of the methodological strategy and its starting point is the consideration that: “the rigor of science loses nothing by entrusting its message to an observer who knows how to admire, to select the just, luminous, changing image. It only gives the concrete term its support and its measure.”5
A tour through Bauru’s landscape begins with a “walk as an aesthetic practice,”6 which articulates phenomenological notions that allow us to approach the landscape not only in the morphological sense, but also through perceptions of the body in space that value the affective dimension and that bring the gaze to an experienced territory.7
The valley bottoms permeate the entire city of Bauru, attesting to the different treatments of the waterways: the canalized river– Rio Bauru– the buffered stream– Córrego das Flores– and other natural water channels. A study of the stream Córrego da Grama intends to promote awareness and a return to consciousness so that Bauru’s natural water does not succumb to gray infrastructure as it has in the past.
The course of this stream rises in the far west, on the outskirts of the city, and flows into the Bauru River at the genesis of the city. Its waterways form a winding timeline that bears witness to the history of different “Baurus,” symbolizing a link that connects the memory of the industrial city, the city designed for the automobile and the city that is expanding without limits.
The route starts in the Nova Esperança neighborhood, near the source of the stream. In this region, we can see the confused processes of urban expansion. Following Av. Pinheiro Machado on an unpaved stretch— a rural Bauru is revealed. The barbed wire fences, the animal husbandry, the dirt road, the wooden bridge over the river. However, traces of human passage over the territory do not allow us to forget that these are degraded landscapes. Illegal disposal of solid waste and open sewage contrast and coexist with the belt of housing developments.
The only way to get from this neighborhood to the opposite side of the valley bottoms is via Av. Waldemar G. Ferreira . The route is hostile and unsafe: there are no sidewalks along most of the avenue. Pedestrians who risk crossing navigate the stretch of road with cars, motorcycles, buses and trucks, following between gullies, as well as more solid waste and polluted stream.
This avenue leads to Vila Industrial. The neighborhood is bordered by railway lines, which form the boundaries between the valley bottoms and the adjacent neighborhoods. There are four dead-end streets in this area, culminating in a kind of linear square. The path follows behind the blind walls of the houses. The absence of “eyes on the street”8 is counteracted by surveillance cameras, gardens cultivated by the residents, children's play equipment, an outdoor gym, benches, a small sand court and an area for keeping animals. Connected to these, next to the apartment complex of low-income housing, is a community garden– a reminder of what it could be like to strengthen the relationship between food and the city. This complex is practically the only public leisure space along the entire length of the stream. It is an incipient park that attests to a desire for these free spaces.
In this residential landscape, where buildings are predominantly single-story, the CEAGESP warehouse silo stands out as a landmark. When you enter it, on the way up to its terrace, the stored grains generate dust and make it difficult to breathe, but when you reach the top, as the external door opens onto the balcony, the air renewed is the prospect of a Bauru that can still reinvent itself based on the logic of nature. It is possible to see the valley bottoms as a great urban void. It is emptiness as power, “as a space of possibility, expectation” ...9
This panoramic view allows you to see several neighborhoods, including the next stop: Vila Santa Filomena. Heading in the direction of Centro, through the Jardim Prudência neighborhood, you pass several blocks with dead-end streets. The asphalt ends abruptly and the valley bottoms begin.You arrive at street Rua São Sebastião— the second crossing of the Córrego da Grama in Vila Santa Filomena.
This open path through the vegetation offers a kind of invitation to pedestrians. It's a chance to get close to the body of water, albeit in precarious circumstances. The neighborhood occupies a considerable part of the river’s floodplain. Along the trail, there are two community gardens, next to the Residencial São Sebastião, which is built into the homes that comprise the irregular occupation of this area, which used to be a favela. The proximity of the waterway to the cultivation area recalls a history that goes back to the origins of agriculture.
There are also fenced structures, apparently for animal husbandry, inserted in the middle of the vegetated area. Irregular occupations continue to exist and are a current concern. This precarious housing is camouflaged along the edges of the forest. These homes are portraits that narrate experiences in open spaces, between the desired and the possible.
An abandoned chair in the abandoned floodplain paints a portrait of what it would be like to sit under the shade of a tree by the waterway, a pleasant image. In this same area, children are playing in the river, picking fruit from the tree and eating under its shelter. A scene of what could be in a landscape developed for good living.
A few kilometers later, the route comes to the third crossing of the stream on Av. Comendador Daniel Pacífico, next to Vila São Manuel. On this stretch, abandonment becomes fatal. Deaths were recorded in this flood-prone region in 2019.
This journey, which recognizes the weaknesses and hidden powers of nature in the midst of abandonment, also involves the subtlety of identifying a biodiversity that survives the impact of urban sprawl. This biodiversity is also threatened by invasive species that have taken over the vegetation in the valley bottoms and are multiplying at a rapid rate in Bauru’s open spaces. Even so, many native species survive and coexist in the interstices, including ruderal ones, which add color, like flowers; texture, like foliage; flavor, like fruits, and Unconventional Food Plants (UFPs), and even healing in the case of medicinal plants.
Amidst the vegetation, following the railroad tracks you arrive at the origin of Bauru, its nodal point. The railway yard with its sheds, locomotives and abandoned wagons is a reminder of the passage of time. Between Lost Landscapes in the present, we see a horizon for healthy spaces in Bauru. The city’s abandoned landscapes reveal a glimpse of possible futures.
1. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001. See VERÍSSIMO, R.C.A. A paisagem como alimento na cidade contemporânea: perspectivas para os fundos de vale em Bauru-SP. 2025. Dissertação (Mestrado em Arquitetura e Urbanismo) - Instituto de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo, São Carlos, 2025.
2. CONSTANTINO, N. R. T. A construção da paisagem de fundos de vale: o caso de Bauru. 2005. Tese (Doutorado) – Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2005.
3. Theme discussed at the International Conference of the Italian Association of Landscape Architecture and the General Assembly of IFLA Europe 2023. See IFLA EUROPE. Resolution 'LOST LANDSCAPES', 2023.
4. SCHENK, L. B. M.; LIMA, M. C. P. B. de. O Método Cartográfico no projeto da Arquitetura da Paisagem. Risco Revista de Pesquisa em Arquitetura e Urbanismo (Online), [S. l.], v. 17, n. 2, p. 26-40, 2019.
5. DARDEL, E. O Homem e a Terra: Natureza da realidade geográfica. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2011, p.3.
6. CARERI, F. WALKSCAPES. O caminhar como prática estética. São Paulo: Gustavo Gilli, 2013.
7. BESSE, J. M. O gosto do mundo: exercícios de paisagem. Rio de Janeiro: UERJ, 2014.
8. JACOBS, J. The death and life of great American cities. Nova York: Vintage Books, 1961.
9. SOLÁ-MORALES, I. Territórios. Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2002, p. 187.