O idoso e a relação entre seus processos de percepção e de apropriação do ambiente construído: o caso de áreas situadas nos bairros Centro, Fragata e São Gonçalo, Pelotas, RS.

Abstract

This research proposes a reflection about the relation between the perception of the environment built by the elderly and the way how they appropriate it. The motivation arose from the need to adapt the cities to the aging of the population: a phenomenon that has many consequences for society in the 21st century and is considered as an important area of studies for quality urban management. Therefore, the central problem referred to the importance of the creation of planned cities based on the perception of the aged people and the environmental behavior they exhibit. The study was based on Architecture and Urbanism area of knowledge, with aspects related with areas of Perception and Environmental Gerontology to reflect on the particularities presented by the elderly. Since the 1960’s, pioneers in the field of Perception - among them Lynch and Tuan - have developed methods of participatory observation, which have related human behavior to the constructed environment and thus indicated a way to set new goals for government and private initiatives, based on the values expressed by users. Based on these studied questions, constantly updated and complemented on a national and international scale, the research assumed the importance of investigating perceptual, behavioral and constructed environment aspects that enable to trace a relation between environment-behavior and that adds knowledge to the other initiatives that are part of the worldwide network of development of age-friendly cities. The research was conducted from the object of a case study applied in the city of Pelotas, represented by the extract produced in the districts Centro, Fragata and São Gonçalo. The results indicated that the aged interviewed in the Center and in the Fragata perceive the city and the neighborhood where they live in a more positive way when compared to the perception of the elderly living in the São Gonçalo area. Moreover, the results indicated that in the Center, where there is the best quality of urban space, there is also a better appropriation represented by the number of elderlies registered in the study areas; in Fragata, with an intermediate physical quality, there is a moderate appropriation of the people with more than sixty years old in the spaces investigated; and in São Gonçalo, where the quality of space was identified as the worst, there is the lowest intensity of appropriation of the environment by them. It was concluded that the reflections about the particularities presented by the elderly coincide with those described in the bibliographic references and point out an influence that the quality of constructed environment exerts on the way the aged perceive it and the influence of perception on the way they appropriate this place.