During periods of heavy rainfall, news of urban disasters such as landslides, floods, and waterlogging is recurrent, resulting in loss of life and severe property damage. In most cases, the vulnerability of the affected areas was already well known, yet their occupation was not prevented. As a rule, these devastated areas are reoccupied by survivors as quickly as possible, without any mitigation work being done to eliminate the risk.

Zoning is the primary tool for urban regulation adopted worldwide. It consists of dividing urban territory into a series of zones, establishing permitted uses for each and setting parameters for the structures that can be built on each lot. In theory, zoning pursues two main objectives: preventing nuisances generated by specific uses and limiting development density to the capacity of existing infrastructure.

One of the structural problems of Brazilian society is the excessive growth of the urban footprint, commonly referred to as "urban sprawl," which results in low-density urban occupation. This dispersed footprint complicates the provision of public services and compromises residents' quality of life, as it fails to generate sufficient demand for mass transit and encourages the use of private automobiles for commuting. To reverse this trend, urban policy seeks to increase the density of the existing city, whether by constructing new buildings on vacant lots or by rehabilitating degraded buildings in central areas. However, as currently designed, housing policy actually encourages urban sprawl.