REFLEXIONS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL MODEL: ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS, YOUR INTERPRETATIONS BY LOCAL ACTORS AND THE IMPACTS VISUALIZATION.

The accelerate process of urban growth of little cities that integrate metropolitan areas in Latin America produced important levels of environmental degradation and social segregation. Further, local government lack technical instrument to generate a sustainable development. This paper explore, in the first part, the development of an integrated urban-ecological simulation modelling to assist municipal institutions and leaders in deciding the future planning policy for this cities category. The method comprises the integration of disperse information in a Geographical Information Systems, to analyze the site carrying capacity und the impact assessment of urban growth with temporal trend analysis and specifically the changes of residential pattern. This will build on previous technical studies where environmental problems are defined and interlinked with a series of interviews with local actors involved in the process (policymaker, economical und social actors). From this integration is clear a general recognition of the most environmental problems, but not as part of their own systems of shares and not specialised in its own territory. For this reason the structure of the proposed simulation is organized around the 3-Dimension visualization of these complex environmental process und the generation of different futures scenarios and the related impacts on the territory. The second part of the paper presents an application of the model in Rio Ceballos (18.000 inhab. and urban growth rate around 5%.) in de meadows of the metropolitan area of Cordoba (1.200.000 ha), Argentina.