As singularidades do processo de urbanização da Amazônia: uma leitura a partir das cidades de Porto Velho (RO) e Marabá (PA)

Abstract

The present thesis outlines as a result the research about the Amazon’s urbanization process, focusing in the cities of Porto Velho (RO) and Marabá (PA). With the goal to understand how the border incorporation process, in its different political-economic and social-ideological contexts, enters these urban realities giving birth to singularities in a local level. Thus, it sought to demonstrate the heterogeneity of the Amazon occupation process, despite the implantation of a homogenizing modernizer model from the 1960 decade, in order to answer how the implanted processes in the Amazon manifest in structure, function and shape organization of these urban spaces. The methodology of analysis used is set within the historical-structuralist tradition, grounded on Santos’s theory, which historically contextualize how the political, economic and social processes in each period analyzed specifically interferes in the organization of each of the urban spaces. The study in question aims to identify the factors that establish or contributes to the incidence of observable phenomena. The empirical evidences are supported by literature review, document analysis, secondary data, and in the development of a Geographical Information System that allowed to keep pace with the expansion of the analyzed cities, associated with its contents. The results reveal that there are singularities in the construction process of Amazonian urban spaces, despite having undergone identical processes present in all Amazonian border, and that these characteristics are manifested in form, function and structure in which the city undertakes in its intra-urban dimension. It is concluded that the condition of periphery of the Brazilian capitalist system, which maintains the natural and human resources, brought to the region a condition that is unique to all urban realities, which are precarious conditions of urban development associated with non-reinvestment of the profit in the region obtained by the withdrawal of resources and the development of economic activities, however, there are singularities that manifest only in a local level, related to the way the cities take on their role in the urban network and its urban structure.