This paper seeks to reflect on how the spatial configuration in the urban environment, which is a manifestation of specific historical social processes, is closely linked to the occurrence of natural disasters and risk areas in Brazil. The disorderly growth of the cities, controlled mainly by private and speculative interests, is considered as a condition of disasters. Reducing stocks of land in safe areas, and their consequent appreciation, provoke the densest population strata in areas of risk. A disaster expresses the materialization of social vulnerability, disaster, the increase of disasters is closely connected with the growing process of underdevelopment and social marginalization. That is why
