Volume 3 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2021.685875 This article is part of the Research TopicUrban Greening in the Global South: Green Gentrification and BeyondView all 13 articles In 2013 the urban authority for São Paulo city was interested in incorporating environmental aspects into the urban licensing process of diverse urban developments To overcome concepts related simply to soil sealing the initiative gave rise to a wide range of principles associated with environmental services and the consideration that green areas in this megacity are unequally distributed Given the costs involved in analyzing each case and the legal uncertainty among entrepreneurs it has become a tradition in Brazil for authorities in charge of urban licensing to follow general regulations rather than case-by-case studies the São Paulo municipal government developed during the period from 2013 to 2016 a governing instrument to deal with these issues the following guiding principles were established: (a) it should have a solid theoretical basis with incentives for consistent public participation; (b) it should be flexible in such a way that it can provide a general framework within which a project designer can make decisions rather than a set of rigidly determined solutions; and (c) it should consider inequalities in the availability of urban green infrastructure throughout the city This paper will first detail the political-institutional context in which the EQ and its guidelines were established and implemented then provide a general overview of the tool and the theoretical frameworks within which it was developed discuss the complex social decision-making process of its legal constraints it analyzes the implementation and application of the EQ to examine its effectiveness and how it relates to the city's gentrification it is considered the replicability potential of the EQ to expand both the supply and distribution of green infrastructure and environmental services throughout the urban environment and contribute toward mitigating the intricate problems of urban environments in the Global South In this paper, it is explored the parceling, use and occupation of land in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, concerning the implementation of the Environmental Quota (EQ), an innovative public policy tool designed to render ecosystem benefits by implementing green infrastructure and flood mitigation on private1 lots in a city that is highly vulnerable to climate effects and has deep social inequities it is described the process that led to the development of the EQ and its subsequent institutionalization as an alternative regulatory policy to deal with urban environmental services section Final Considerations presents the final considerations especially concerning discussions surrounding the replicability of development analogous to the EQ in other cities This paper is developed from the empirical evidence through participant observation (Yin, 2015) made by the first four authors which are career technicians working for the city of São Paulo and played prominent roles in proposing analyzing and discussing the process of environmental innovation within the context of development and implementation of local government policy It relates to the public processes and is also dedicated to highlighting the relevant dialogue between various stakeholders and reflections on issues inherent to the challenges of urban greening and urban sustainability São Paulo city2 is the capital of the state of São Paulo and is the most populous municipality in Brazil, with about 12 million people (IBGE—Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 2021). Although the city only occupies 0.02% of Brazil's total landmass, it concentrates 12% of the country's GDP (Seade apud EMPLASA, 2019) São Paulo is characterized by high population density in the outskirts and unequal distribution of green areas and environmental services Any innovation implemented in the greater cities of these regions has the potential to reverberate through to the surrounding municipalities and further contribute to the regional dilemmas of unsustainable urbanization In order to implement the most recent São Paulo Municipality Strategic Master Plan which came into effect by way of law 16,050 on July 31 it was required that several laws should be updated among which was the law concerning the parceling During the preliminary works for the formulation of the new zoning law the city administration decided to create a legal clause making mandatory for anyone seeking a license to build or renovate buildings to consider the environmental aspects of doing so in addition to the environmental licenses already required by the National Environmental System (SISNAMA) unprecedented in the various Brazilian legal bodies Internal seminars were held within the municipal administration to determine the guidelines to steer the development of the EQ. It was decided that the research being carried out by Caetano (2016) for his PhD thesis at the School of Public Health within the University of São Paulo would be used as a theoretical starting point to develop the EQ an ad hoc working group (WG) made up of four technicians from the São Paulo City Hall was created These technicians are the first four authors of this paper it has been led by the following conceptual guidelines: first that the purpose of the EQ is to insert an environmental clause in the legislation about the parceling that the insertion of such a clause must occur by way of institutionalizing the EQ into the zoning law with the same status as pre-established urban parameters the building height and the floor area coefficient Three working guidelines were also established by the WG at the onset: • Flexibility: the designers–for any submitting proposal–should not compose their projects from stereotypical solutions imposed by legislation but from a relatively broad menu of environmental measures provided by the EQ legislation; • Simplicity for the designer and the licensing body: a challenge to developing the EQ was to create a simplified process to assess complex issues This was made possible with a set of powerful indicators The result of this simplification is an electronic spreadsheet that facilitates the elaboration of each project considerably for the user and political complexities inherent to the city of São Paulo it was deemed appropriate to add another guideline: • No retrogression when it comes to environmental matters: for the EQ to be politically viable it should not repeal any previously established legal municipal environmental protection provisions it would have been possible for any parties interested in relaxing previously established environmental provisions to maliciously take advantage of the EQ development process to do so groups who have fought hard and successfully over time to advance environmental legislation would not feel secure about EQ and they would oppose it EQ operationalization should be as follows - The EQ is an index that aggregates several indicators to evaluate the environmental performance of an urban built-up plot; - A given designer develops the lot coverage from a menu available in the legislation of surfaces of environmental relevance in the project (for example Using an electronic spreadsheet provided by the municipality the area covered by these biotopes is processed to generate a number This number is the project's EQ (EQproj) The project must be such that the EQproj is either equal to or greater than the minimum established by the legislation (EQmin) which is determined according to the location and area of the lot The solid theoretical basis ensured that the indicators related to these environmental goals (Table 1) had cardinal character Other environmental goals were implicitly considered in the choice of such goals the indicators chosen for the implicit environmental objectives are merely ordinal in nature Drainage is one of several rainwater management measures that can occur on three levels: macro drainage each lot is considered to be a watershed wherein the outlet corresponds to the pipes through which stormwater flows from the lot to the micro drainage system In a given basin with an area on the order of magnitude of an urban lot, it is perfectly adequate to use the rational method to determine the maximum outflow. To consider storage aspects, it is best to use the modified rational method (Chow et al., 1988) each surface element of the constructed lot is assigned a runoff coefficient value (the surface elements chosen by the landscaper which are the called biotopes) An increase in the runoff coefficient can lead to the following outcomes: (a) the peak of the outflow hydrograph increases (b) the lag time of the outflow hydrograph decreases; (c) the volume of water drained tends to increase These are undesirable situations as they overload micro drainage systems It was decided that the EQ should only address the abatement in the peak of the outflow hydrograph It was also decided that any measures aimed at abatement should be classified into one of two categories as follows: (a) conventional measures (detention and retention for reservoirs) or (b) non-conventional measures (e.g. a decision was made to adopt the detention reservoir as the paradigmatic situation to develop the EQ given that this is the measure that the technical community and licensors are most familiar with Non-conventional measures will be subjected to regulations that are currently being elaborated maximum lot output flow in the pre-developed condition; Qmaxpos maximum lot output flow in the post-developed condition; Qmaxreg maximum lot outlet flow with regulation through the chosen detention reservoir; The lines of the hydrographs are presented as straight for the sake of simplicity The EQ procedure is currently as follows: first a given designer chooses the detention reservoir volume then D is calculated according to the spreadsheet A possible reversal of these procedures is currently being studied whereby the designer would first choose a D-value and then the spreadsheet would calculate the minimum reserve volume needed to obtain this D value the EQ establishes detention reservoir outlet structure requirements without which the mere requirement to a minimum detention volume would be innocuous Note that this calculation does not consider the information inscribed in the structure of the ecosystem eco-exergy in a building project will relate to the diversity of tree strata and the types of vegetation cover rather than just the number of square meters of vegetation Thus, the V indicator of the EQ corresponds to the ratio between (a) the sum of a simplified Jørgensen's eco-exergy associated with the different surface biotopes of the per unit plot area and (b) a reference value that is intended to normalize the indicator. Table 2 clarifies how the V indicator is calculated demonstrating some possible landscape solutions listed in the EQ menu literature reviews were conducted regarding their biomass and the values used were judiciously chosen Caetano (2016) argued that eco-exergy also serves as a microclimate indicator and is frequently associated with urban greening and related environmental services the V indicator seeks to describe how a built lot performs to improve both ecosystem integrity and the surrounding microclimate Given that a set of general rules regulates the EQ for licensing purposes, rather than on a case-by-case basis, it is essential to emphasize that mere compliance with its requirements does not guarantee, in of itself, a good landscape or lot drainage project (OBSERVASP, 2015; Cioni and Passos, 2018) This task is up to the landscape architect and the hydraulic engineer Once the values of the D and V indicators have been obtained for the project obtained by taking the weighted geometric mean of both The WG opted to adopt the geometric mean instead of the arithmetic mean to limit the possibility that a designer could compensate excessively poor performance by promoting lot drainage with good performance to promote ecosystem quality and microclimate improvement Table 1 presents a summary of the intertwined relationships between the environmental objectives considered in the EQ Values for EQmin (environmental standards) were set as a function of lot area and lot position in the city Considering that the city of São Paulo has rigorous legislation regarding tree management development of the EQ provided a glimpse of a very auspicious environmental possibility The paradoxical effect of excessive legal protection of an environmental good such as protection of a given tree species The procedures to manage trees on land in the city of São Paulo are so difficult and complex that real estate developers argue the presence of trees on a given plot of land tends to devalue the property Since trees that already exist in a given plot of land considerably increase the numerical value of EQ as it is calculated in its spreadsheet it is clear that the peripheral regions of the city received the worst scores in terms of their environmental situation and also in terms of the potential for change This corresponds to more evidence of environmental inequalities in the city's structure which impacts the environmental comfort of its residents and their leisure possibilities Environmental Qualification Perimeters in the São Paulo municipality territory Source: São Paulo City Hall; adapted by the authors Environmental Qualification Perimeters (EQPs) are The territory of the municipality of São Paulo was divided into homogeneous regions into environmental terms requirements are presented in the law in terms of minimum permeability (even for the lots dispensed from the EQ) as well as the minimum numerical values of the EQ score as a function of the lot size each homogeneous region was evaluated in terms of indicators for (a) microclimate plus biodiversity with 1 corresponding to the best state and 4 the worst; (b) drainage with 4 corresponding to the best potential and 1 the worst The indicators were then added together in order to be ranked the greater the legal requirements of each EQP The idea of including state indicators and a potential transformation indicator and providing them with values on an opposite scale rests on the following: an EQP with a good environmental state and very bad transformation potential receives the worst grades the minor legal requirements in terms of EQ; on the contrary an EQP with a deplorable environmental state and a good transformation potential receives the best grades therefore having the highest legal requirements in terms of EQ After an environmental certifier is registered with the municipality different levels of its certification are scored according to EQ legislation being the EQ incentive provided according to that score The certification incentive is only valid for either residential developments or non-residential developments associated with residential use at the start of a new municipal administration it was well-known that the then-mayor had formed a comprehensive coalition that included politicians from both the right and left sides of the political spectrum Although the mayor did not receive unconditional support negotiations occurred in such a way that made it possible for the executive branch to pass their bills comfortably that it was willing to spend its political capital This also explains why the WG was pressured to make the EQ self-applicable that could easily amend the EQ under future administrations Stakeholder involvement in EQ development and implementation Career civil servants have sufficient autonomy not to be obliged to compromise with the political options of the government5 is to maintain the possible neutrality and assist the government doing so in the form of suggestions for alternatives for government officials to make their political decisions in producing alternatives to submitted to government political agents public career civil servants in the early stages of their work should have in mind the political preferences of their hierarchical superiors and all stakeholders also evaluating the power relations between them It is not a good technique to produce proposals that are not politically viable or are not likely to be easily adjusted according to the political negotiations conducted between the stakeholders That is why it can happen that career civil servants still in the development phase of their jobs are subject to direct pressure from stakeholders outside the public administration The government itself is also not homogeneous nor does it always know exactly what it wants This can lead government officials to give contradictory or empty directives that must be taken into account by the career civil servers Since the early stages of the development of the EQ the WG considered political backgrounds and proceeded with negotiations involving stakeholders The WG had always kept in mind that the government itself is not homogeneous and this can lead government officials to give contradictory directives In the public service sector, five significant situations occurred as the EQ was being developed, as reported in Box 2 Situations of EQ development in the public service sector 1) The group that was developing an update of the Building and Construction Code hardly opposed the EQ, alleging that the drainage concepts proposed in the development of EQ were not aligned with those that they had been adopted, mainly the concept of specific flow [Tucci, 2000; São Paulo (City), 2012] 2) Some public employees who had been developing academic studies were pleased to incorporate these studies into the EQ proposal 3) The staff responsible for approving tree management expressed strong opposition to the final 4) Some staff with excellent academic credentials complained that they had not been asked to contribute to the EQ This was due to the urgency with which the process was carried out 5) Career civil servants involved in licensing hardly opposed the first decree proposal when it was being written This opposition had to do with the legal uncertainty surrounding the activity of these servants the São Paulo municipal government was widely sensitive to the demands of social housing movements The municipal government established a clause into law that stated the EQ parameters for social housing would be subject to specific regulation the municipal government arbitrated these interests by establishing in the urban zoning areas specifically intended for low-income housing developments and other areas of environmental interest some design entities took a keen interest in it and the new possibilities it provided feasibility studies for real estate developments were relatively simple Implementation of the EQ meant that many landscape design decisions would need to be made at the feasibility study stage This situation obviously displeased entrepreneurs Some designers considered it a valorization of their profession due to the EQ opening up designers realized the prospect for a new market with more possibilities and more plasticity to their projects especially concerning green infrastructure; others demonstrated being displeased and pressured by their clients to respond to the new requirements it became impossible to oppose the idea of incorporating environmental aspects in the zoning law Perhaps it was precisely due to this unfeasibility to publicly oppose the EQ that some members of the real estate developers sector, which is quite powerful economically and politically, did not demonstrate any objections to the EQ. It is worthy to reinforce that more elaborate projects tend to be of better quality, offering benefits to buyers that developers will know how to use. Table 5 summarizes some criticisms of EQ and the responses to those criticisms Two elements are fundamental to guaranteeing the effective implementation of urban planning guidelines: licensing and inspection the municipality of São Paulo faces some challenges Licensing of the EQ occurs within the scope of the general process to request an urban license for a given development the process to request an urban license for a “large-scale” development is overseen by a central department (currently the Secretariat of Urbanism and Licensing whereas the process to request a “small-scale” is overseen by decentralized units A sample of 83 non-residential developments was extracted to carry out an initial assessment of the EQ a complete assessment of these effects would require further study in much greater depth and comprehensiveness the results presented here must be carefully considered The total area consumed by each of these developments varies between 551 m2 and 66,041 m2 with an average development area of 4,333 m2 The total area consumed by all of these developments combined is 34.7 ha The municipality of São Paulo is located in the Atlantic Forest biome, a biome similar to that of the Amazon concerning biodiversity. Based on data from Jørgensen (2010), Lima (2010), and Forster and Melo (2007), the eco-exergy of fragments of secondary Atlantic Rain Forest in the initial/intermediate succession stage was roughly estimated at 1.7 e.u./m2 or 32 GJ/m2 (see Table 2) The weighted average simplified eco-exergy of the 83 developments considered here was found to be ~0.8 e.u./m2 that is approximately half of the value above which demonstrates good environmental performance in promoting ecosystem quality and improving the microclimate The exergy of the analyzed enterprises amounted to 4.8 PJ (petajoules) Wall (2009) showed that the relationship between physical exergy and the amount of information at room temperature corresponds to 2.9 × 10−21 J/bit and the exergy per unit of information of a protein synthesis process in a cell is 4.6 × 10−21 J/bit Assuming that one unit of eco-exergy corresponds to the same amount of information as one unit of physical exergy (which would provide only one order of magnitude given that they use different concepts and references) the amount of information stored in the vegetation of these 83 developments would be in the order of 4.7 × 1030 bit/m2 and the total amount of information stored would be in the order of 1.7 × 1036 bit which relates the performance of the development to the plot drainage This result would disappoint those who advocates of zero impact measures The weighted average of the runoff coefficient is 0.65 This runoff coefficient corresponds to that used by the rational method to estimate the flow corresponding to a precipitation of duration equal to the time of concentration of the basin; thus it does not consider the effect of the reservoir It is important to note that the simplifications made in the QA to estimate the runoff coefficient were such that they tend to increase the numerical value of this coefficient After adopting some assumptions to simplify the calculation it was concluded that such an area would be ~300 ha This result is remarkable since the sum of the lot areas corresponds to 35 ha Only a more complete study could test the validity of the adopted hypothesis and analysis it is essential not to lose sight that the average of a function (correct method) does not always come closer to the function of the average (the method used here) these are only preliminary calculations that are intended to provide a starting point to the structure of future evaluations the Municipal Secretariat of Green and Environment is engaged in the so-called green plans as determined by the Strategic Master Plan for the City of São Paulo (Municipal Law No the Municipal Plan for Conservation and Recovery of Areas Providing Environmental Services the Municipal Plan for Urban Afforestation and the Municipal Plan for the Atlantic Forest These plans and actions were established through participatory and considerable human resources were allocated toward them It is essential to keep in mind that these plans prioritize concerns over gentrification by establishing mechanisms to minimize it the EQ constitutes an unprecedented and well-liked by-product of these established priorities Even lots smaller than 500 m2, for which the EQ provisions do not apply7 (Nobre et al., 2015; Da Silva et al., 2018) must comply with a minimum permeability rate The EQ not only established a significant increase to the minimum permeability rate compared to the previous requirements It also modified the concept to become more rigorous whereby only garden areas on natural soil are accepted and there cannot be slabs under them The EQ is very customized to the complexities inherent to the city of São Paulo the political situation at the time it was being developed some of the experience gained in developing the EQ in São Paulo could serve as a starting point to discuss specific issues when developing an instrument analogous to the EQ in other cities to address the city's real estate market the local political context and how public administration oversee structures affect it (for better or worse) the state and municipal government guidelines and to assess the decision making processes and survey the main stakeholders but it is also important to remember that political processes are complex and unpredictable and this timeline will need to be adjusted continuously A small group of career civil servants with experience in public administration composed of members from different backgrounds and a history of working together is desirable How public participation will take place must be defined a priori It has been proven to be adequate to convene specialists and allow a small degree of intervention among stakeholders in the development phase all under the political tutelage of the municipal government including from other spheres of government the public should be encouraged to participate A careful strategy must be defined to handle this phase making primers for citizens to participate in public hearings although public participation is a mandatory requirement of any public policy The government has to assume the burden of the decision in the event of a deadlock Issues related to representativity and proportional representation among the entities who will act on behalf of the public are complex as in São Paulo and in many Global South cities the experience of the EQ in the municipality of São Paulo provides an alternative as it aggregates three different environmental objectives within a plausible framework Any government considering adopting a similar tool to the EQ should consider whether it is more convenient to establish a single index or to separate the indicators when determining different environmental objectives Architects tend to have spatial vision and are engineers tend to have a more functional vision; therefore The choice to establish weighting factors related to an indicator analogous to V through the Delphi method, for example, should be studied, as Berlin did to develop the Biotope Area Factor (Keeley, 2011) weighting factors would be easier to understand this would come at the expense of scientific rigor and political legitimacy The convenience provided by establishing mandatory adherence to the principle of zero impact on lot drainage should be studied. The convenience of adopting the concept of specific flow should also be considered (Tucci, 2000) The convenience of establishing regulations concerning the definitive lowering of the water table by buildings with subsoil which implies the need for permanent pumping the convenience of repealing existing environmental legislation should be analyzed assuming the political burden of doing so in case of contradictions The legal framework and the control mechanisms and institutions must be studied very carefully to not hinder licensing and inspection If enforcement mechanisms are not carefully considered the effectiveness of the regulation tool will be seriously compromised The degree of administrative discretion for licensing should be carefully considered The relationship of EQ with other environmental regulation tools must be considered Everything should be consistent with the culture of the involved organizations It is mandatory to proceed in a multi- and interdisciplinary way when it comes to environmental matters in complex urban contexts there will be several difficulties demanding careful prior assessments and political work EQ operationalized a principle of public function for the private properties what in the case of Brazil set out in the Federal Constitution the EQ experience can provide insights into how to promote urban greening from private developments in a way that benefits the whole city The decision made by the municipality of São Paulo to introduce an environmental element to its land parceling from a desire to overcome some of the limitations imposed by the National Environmental System (SISNAMA) in which São Paulo acts as a local agency These limitations have to deal with federal legislation's formal rigidity which reflects the previous experiences of some state agencies in approving pollution control legislation and Environmental Impact Studies it was in the City's interest to capillarize and universalize environmental measures at the lot level for either new developments or renovations by other cities that have undergone similar processes the development of São Paulo's tool (the EQ) differed substantially from its predecessors The EQ explicitly states its three environmental objectives which relate to ecological and microclimatic aspects are solved by lot occupation and development The number called EQ is an aggregate of indicators that seek to evaluate the environmental performance of a given lot Given that these indicators are grounded on a solid theoretical foundation an assessment of the environmental performance of a given plot can be objectively measured and compared with other measures and indicators A very expeditious analysis showed possible aspects of the effectiveness of EQ in non-residential buildings EQ had a good ecological and microclimate performance and a somewhat disappointing but good enough performance in lot drainage These conclusions need to be ratified by a more comprehensive and in-depth study it would be interesting to compare these results with those to be obtained for residential buildings Development of the EQ was centered mainly around a small ad hoc WG formed by four municipal government employees who have decades of experience working in this area and are and have considerable knowledge of the city These professionals formed this group based on their individual expertise and their previous experience working together This group developed the EQ over hundreds of hours of work sought feedback from both outside and local experts attended to the (sometimes conflicting) demands from the local government and mediated interests between stakeholders and local government the group anticipated the different interests that would converge in the EQ and sought to develop compromises to accelerate political convergence and even though the EQ is an unprecedented tool to insert environmental aspects into the legislation governing land parceling the group strived for reasonableness so that the EQ would be respected by the diverse interest groups Several stakeholders have sought to influence the EQ during its development Prominent among them is the powerful real estate development industry any given legal initiative that implies an increase in costs these additional costs are absorbed by buyers and developers according to the relative elasticity of the supply and demand curves for new real estate It is essential to say that the municipal government dared to take a chance such a new proposal as the EQ even though it could have weakened its political capital given that such a measure was unprecedented Given that it is the center of a large peripheral capitalist megalopolis São Paulo city has enormous social especially in terms of unequal access to the city's infrastructure and quality of life Given these enormous problems and environmental imbalances in the city even if a stakeholder were to disagree with the EQ it would be difficult for them to publicly position themselves against it This is what was expected from the real estate development sector this sector showed relative small resistance to the EQ despite the economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude that had engulfed the country Perhaps the incentives contributed to this lack of resistance which are pretty usual in compliance processes it is remarkable the acceptance of the EQ among designers who were happy to see the diverse alternatives that the EQ made possible The interests of popular urban housing movements ignored rather than positioned themselves in front of EQ It was a positive convergence considering their good organization and influence due to the city's huge housing deficit The commitment of municipal (local) governments is of decisive importance to enable a tool like EQ Also remarkable is the municipal government's willingness to mobilize its political capital to make a tool like EQ politically viable and supporting its approval in the city council This is a key element for any other city that wishes to successfully develop a tool similar to the EQ It is important to note that the EQ does not imply that addressing the city's environmental and landscape issues will be delegated to the private sector It merely requests that this sector contribute within the framework of the social function of property enshrined in the 1988 Federal Constitution Given the city's severe environmental problems the EQ would be modest in isolation (since it would only apply to the formal sector of housing developments) Thus it must be accompanied by a diversity of landscape and sanitation plans EQ is modest in its effectiveness in the face of serious environmental problems in the city it is also modest in its capacity to produce gentrification the aforementioned green plans work explicitly with the issue of gentrification and are committed to reducing inequalities in access to urban green infrastructure It cannot be forgotten that if EQ had its application limited to lots smaller than 500 m2 having limited its effects on the fringes of the city the minimum permeability rates remain not only valid for any lot size both from a quantitative perspective (the minimum rates are higher) as a qualitative one (to be considered a permeable area it cannot be inscribed in a semi-permeable area or have a slab under it) considering the need to better understanding the potentialities of EQ we suggest three lines for further studies on physical and urban effects of the application of EQ considering properties of adaptation on climate change perspectives of refinement of EQ in terms of how to make concepts into better applications comparative studies on São Paulo's EQ with the experiences of Berlin the Secretariat of Green and Environment of the São Paulo City is conducting studies in the first and second lines This and more in-depth comparisons on similar policies can give more comprehensive guidelines for the replicability of these innovative alternatives to contribute to urban sustainability in the face of climate change and PS contributed in the process of implementation of the EQ and as so provided relevant information produced through participant observation PC and LG worked collaboratively in proposing and writing the first draft PS made inputs of data and reviewed the final version All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version The authors received support from FAPESP–São Paulo Research Foundation (proc CAPES/PROEX and from CNPq–National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (proc The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest The handling editor PT declared a shared affiliation with one of the authors 1. ^Our discussion also applies to developments in public lots we highlight the perspective of private lots that represent the vast majority of permits it is the only country in the world that gives this status to municipalities 3. ^SENATSVERWALTUNG FÜR UMWELT, VERKEHR UND KLIMASCHUTZ STADT BERLIN. BFF Biotopflächenfaktor https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/natur-und-gruen/landschaftsplanung/bff-biotopflaechenfaktor/ (accessed February 14 4. ^An onerous grant for the right to build which establishes that property owner can build beyond the percentage of lot area pre-established by law is issued by the São Paulo municipal government to the property owner upon payment of a financial consideration 5. ^The purpose of the group of career civil servants (servidores efetivos in Portuguese) is to provide a permanent structure for the Public Administration due to the sudden changes in the government in office They are hired from public tenders and are not appointed or elected In order to protect themselves from undue or illegal coercion they are given job stability after a three-year probationary period and administrative liability for their decisions or opinions issued There is great legal uncertainty in its activity which tends to paralyze the public administration are employees of the executive branch of São Paulo city They are not government employees in power although they maintain a hierarchical relationship with it 6. ^It cannot be overlooked here that the cost increases implied by EQ are partly passed on to consumers and partly reduce the profits of developers it can be said that the proportion between the transfer of costs and the decrease in profits will depend on the relative elasticity of the supply and demand curves for housing There is a particular generational injustice involved in this process since younger generations will bear the costs of EQ while all will enjoy the benefits 7. ^The restriction of the mandatory application of the provisions of the EQ to lots smaller than 500 m2 was a political requirement against which the WG unsuccessfully opposed It should be noted that to a development in a lot smaller than 500 m2 is allowed the application of EQ so that it can enjoy the incentives of EQ to the requirements presented above in terms of minimum permeability rate and all other urban and environmental legislation 8. ^For example, the municipality of Campo Grande, capital of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, created through complementary law n. 341, of December 4, 2018, the Environmental Relevance Rate (TRA), clearly inspired by the EQ (see also Campo Grande, 2021) The municipality of Ribeirão Preto is also studying an urban instrument in part inspired by the EQ ABNT—Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (2007) NBR 15527: Água de chuva—aproveitamento de coberturas em áreas urbanas para fins não potáveis—requisitos Enabling green and blue infrastructure to improve contributions to human well-being and equity in urban systems Equity impacts of urban land use planning for climate adaptation: critical perspectives from the global north and south Aproveitamento de água de chuva para fins não potáveis na cidade de Vitória (ES) (Master thesis) Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Ambiental Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo Cities and the governing of climate change CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Fundamentação teórica da Quota Ambiental e estudo de caso de seu desenvolvimento em São Paulo (PhD Thesis) Google Scholar Caixa Econômica Federal (2021). 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