Assessment of municipal potential prosperity, carrying capacity and trade

Understanding the potential prosperity of municipal economies, the welfare and the role of trade of these economies is an important issue in a world in which more than 50% of the population lives in urban centers. ABC Paulista groups three cities which act as production centers combining the abundance of labor and knowledge with the proximity to big consumer centers. The emergy approach recognizes the existence of deterministic principles in economic systems but emphasizes the role of resources, energy and environment. This approach was applied to ABC Paulista to evaluate municipal potential prosperity in the context of the energy resource constraints and showed that ABC municipalities are not autonomous and depend almost entirely on external resources. Indices for assess the human carrying capacity and the standards of living showed that only 2% of the population could be sustained indefinitely by the local emergy. The results lead to the idea that ABC can be seen as an “industry”, which holds the know-how and assets transforming raw materials into vehicles and chemicals that are feedback to the surrounding system. However, the analysis of ABC trade shows that both the Brazilian and the foreign markets take advantage when buying from ABC suggesting that the search for the chances of the prolongation of this specific urban settlement may require different policies and management designs.