This dissertation examines the concepts of green infrastructure – taken as the state of the art in ecological landscape planning – as instruments for sustainable urban planning. The theory of green infrastructure holds that conservation, restoration and maintenance of the functioning of natural systems not only protect ecological values and functions, they also promote many economic, social and cultural benefits. Green infrastructure is a new expression, first used in Florida (USA) in 1994 in a report directed to the American government on strategies to preserve the environment, with the intention of reflecting the notion that natural systems are just as or even more important than the components of conventional (gray) infrastructure to the functioning and development of a community. However, although the expression green infrastructure is relatively new, its concept is not, because it is based on studies of landscape design and the interactions between man and nature dating back more than 150 years. In summary, green infrastructure is a response to the new paradigm of sustainable urbanization, based on the promotion of ecological services and natural landscaping in constructed environments, to enable urban development in harmony with environmental and socio-cultural concerns. Among the possible applications of green infrastructure is the planning of a green infrastructure network in broader scales (municipal, state, regional or even national), based on protection and rehabilitation of natural areas that are interconnected, to promote natural ecological processes. Green infrastructure should be designed so that an area s natural ecological patterns are replicated and appropriate starting and ending points are provided for the connections of the landscape. In short, the green infrastructure network connects ecosystems and landscapes in a system composed of hubs and links, which vary in size, function and domain. The hubs are the origin or destination of the animals, people and ecological processes that move through the system, functioning as anchor spaces of the network, while the links interconnect the system, functioning as ecological corridors, which are fundamental for the maintenance of ecological processes. Planning a green infrastructure network implies defining which areas will integrate the system and what their functions will be in the network. This definition is intrinsically related to the definition of the land use and occupation, since incompatible uses can compromise the network s functioning. Defining the areas that will be included in the network also entails choosing which areas must be protected and hence not occupied. Therefore, planning a green infrastructure network results, among other outcomes, in the definition of land use and is a useful planning too for sustainable urban planning. The aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate that the planning of a green infrastructure network can be an effective instrument not only for sustainable urban planning, but also can reduce the risks to the population by preventing tragedies from natural disasters, besides favoring enhanced natural landscapes and preservation of the environment. This dissertation is divided into five chapters, as follows: The first, the introduction, briefly sets the context of the worsening urban problems and the negative impacts generated by cities, such as the occurrence of increasingly frequent extreme natural events (floods, heat and cold waves, strong hurricanes, blizzards, landslides and droughts) and the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity, with the consequent loss of ecological benefits, and touches on the urgent need for solutions that seek to conciliate urban development with the environment. The second chapter, Green infrastructure, summarizes the theoretical framework underpinning the dissertation s theme. It first provides a brief retrospective of the concepts and practices that served as the base for developing the idea of green infrastructure and then presents its definition, principles, functions, benefits and applications, focusing on the green infrastructure construct as an instrument for land occupation planning. The main academic work utilized in examining the theme was the book Green Infrastructure – Linking Landscapes and Communities, by Mark A. Benedict and Edward T. McMahon, published in 2006, from where the concepts, principles and applications presented in this paper were drawn. Mark A. Benedict is recognized as the main proponent of green infrastructure in the United States. He founded the Conservation Fund s Green Infrastructure Program and helped develop the Fund s tools and training programs to support planning of development so as to preserve green spaces. The third chapter, Green infrastructure applied to urban occupation in Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro, brings an application of the concepts and methods of green infrastructure to the formulation of a Basic Occupation Plan for a specific area in the municipality of Nova Friburgo (Rio de Janeiro state): The D Antas Stream Environmental Basin. This basin covers an area of 5,820 hectares and is under pressure from urban expansion but is still suitable for planned occupation. It is also one of the areas that were hard hit by the tragic landslides and flooding in the mountain region of Rio de Janeiro in January 2011 (the main reason for choosing it as a case study). As such, it serves as an example of how errors of urbanization and lack of proper land use planning aggravate the consequences of natural disasters. The case study of the D Antas Stream Environmental Basin aims to demonstrate the importance of understanding the ecological processes of the landscape for planning human activities. A first important step in planning occupation is to identify the areas that should not be occupied, and the basis of this is understanding the landscape as a network of ecological processes that are reflected in the structure of this landscape, defined as type of snapshot of the distribution of matter and energy according to the ecological processes at a determined point in time. The underlying principle is that comprehending the functioning of natural systems permits more secure direction of land occupation. The definition of the Basic Occupation Plan for the D Antas Stream Environmental Basin is based on the planning of a green infrastructure network. The methodology indicated which areas are most important to the maintenance of environmental functions and should thus be protected by restricting occupation. This restriction was defined mainly by selecting the biophysical indicator parameters (terrain, hydrology and plant cover), with the objective of characterizing the natural landscape – the main conditioner of the Plan. These restrictions are presented and analyzed in maps. The factors restricting occupation are divided into two general themes: physical restrictions and biological restrictions. The presence of Permanent Protection Areas was also a parameter restricting occupation, because besides being required by law, these areas are coherent with the preservation of natural systems due to their varied environmental functions. The next step was to define the areas favorable and unfavorable for occupation in light of the restrictions established, resulting in a map of the study area with classification into three categories: areas fully suitable for occupation, areas suitable for low occupation, and areas unsuitable for any occupation. This classification relied on the results of the diagnostic step and provided the bases for defining the green infrastructure network of D Anta Stream Environmental Basin. These last areas, considered as having priority for protection, restoration or reclamation, must compose the network, even over the long term, exercising the function of hubs or links. Development of the methodology applied to D Antas Stream Environmental Basin used as references the publications Espaços Livres: sistema e projeto territorial, by the architect and urbanist Raquel Tardin (2008), and Planejamento Ambiental: teoria e prática, by the biologist Rozely Ferreira dos Santos (2004). The fourth chapter, Green infrastructure types for the local scale, brings suggestions for multifunctional types of green infrastructure that can be applied at the local level, a scale that was not directly addressed in the case study proposal, but that is considered just as important as the planning scale of the green infrastructure network. The fifth and concluding chapter presents a summary of the main findings and evidence obtained during the work and also contains some recommendations. To recapitulate, this dissertation presents a methodological proposal for analysis of the landscape for urban occupation planning, based on the concepts of green infrastructure, with the final result being a Basic Occupation Plan for the D Anta Stream Environmental Basin.