Ana Cláudia Duarte Cardoso

A evolução urbana de Belém: trajetória de ambiguidades e conflitos socioambientais

While the understanding about the meaning of urban sustainability evolves in Brazil, market practices related to land use and occupation, as well as urban expansion, have introduced in the city of Belem unsustainable circumstances from the perspective of the Amazonian context. Before the economic and logistic integration of that region into the country, sustainable relationships between people and territory were prevailing. However, at the metropolitan scale, the lack of policies to meet social demands have generated ambiguous situations, in which flood plain ecosystems have been occupied, and after decades have become spaces of resistance for workers and natives, against the new urban expansion processes led by the real estate market, which are guided by fragmentation, sprawl, and transformation of river margins into consumption spaces.

Impasses e desafios na gestão da Região Metropolitana de Belém

Este artigo resgata a trajetoria da implementacao da Regiao Metropolitana de Belem, a menor das regioes metropolitanas instituidas atraves da lei complementar de 14 de 1973. Inicialmente, participavam da RMB apenas os municipios de Belem e Ananindeua, em 1995 foram incorporados a RMB os municipios de Marituba, Benevides e Santa Barbara do Para, e, atualmente, outros municipios apresentaram projetos de inclusao na Assembleia Legislativa do Estado do Para. Tres momentos sao claramente distintos nesse processo, o de instrumentalizacao da RMB, o de modificacao nas competencias nas diversas instâncias de poder e nas estrategias de gestao metropolitana, e o da ampliacao da RMB. A dissociacao entre as estrategias de planejamento e gestao e a evolucao da ocupacao do territorio apresenta evidencias da incapacidade de utilizacao da gestao metropolitana como instrumento de politicas regionais e nacionais que sejam comprometidas com a reducao de desequilibrios historicos existentes entre as escalas urbana e regional, tanto na Amazonia quanto no Brasil.

Quando o projeto disfarça o plano: concepções de planejamento e suas metamorfoses em Belém (PA)

Uma recente iniciativa da Prefeitura Municipal de Belem de reformar a feira do Ver-o-Peso, principal simbolo do centro historico da capital e tomada, neste artigo, como referencia para discussao sobre as concepcoes de cidade e intervencoes, conduzidas por grupos politicos locais, a partir de coalizoes com o setor privado e a midia local. Abordam-se, particularmente, as contradicoes presentes na tentativa de internacionalizacao da cidade e o carater seletivo que o planejamento estrategico oferece, quando a esfera politica nao considera o ambiente urbano amazonico em sua complexidade. O texto alerta que seria possivel criar mediacoes para as concepcoes exogenas de planejamento para propor uma base filosofica para a modernizacao de Belem atenta a participacao popular, a festa inclusiva e a sociobiodiversidade local.

Urban Tropical Forest: Where Nature and Human Settlements Are Assets for Overcoming Dependency, but How Can Urbanisation Theories Identify These Potentials?

This paper focuses on the extensive urbanisation of the Eastern Amazon, where human settlements date back to an era when total cooperation existed between man and nature, a time when land, water, forest and people were perceived as inseparable parts of the whole. However, this harmonious situation has ceased to exist following several episodes of colonisation and modernisation. During the last initiative to integrate the region with the rest of the country, it was classified under the social divisions of Brazilian labour as agrarian and suitable for the mineral extraction industry. Furthermore, the recent overlap between the interests of privately owned global companies and federal investments in logistics, and of the pattern of Portuguese colonisation, has led to a process of hybrid urbanisation. The historical pattern of population dispersion has also suffered modifications whereby connections have been established that link previously isolated settlements to national centres and global metropolises. Such practices have acted against all current data on climate change and have disrespected nature and the environment to such an extent that selective modernization and its reverse, informal occupation, have increased the spread of deforestation, pollution, the siltation of rivers and the reduction of surface water volumes. This article demonstrates how these transformations have been responsible for the exclusion of those groups forced onto the margins of modernisation: people born in the region who depend on the biophysical base for their livelihood, including indigenous peoples, caboclos (the offspring of indigenous and Portuguese peoples), peasants and traditional communities who live in rural areas or were pushed into urban areas once the countryside had been restructured. The article also seeks to expose local resistance to this process, thereby revealing how extensive urbanisation may evolve from mere economic integration towards comprehensive urbanisation, capable of creating new forms of citizenship and a respect for nature, thereby transforming it into the extensive naturalisation of the urban.

O papel da grande mineração e sua interação com a dinâmica urbana em uma região de fronteira na Amazônia

Este artigo aborda particularidades do processo de urbanizacao associadas as dinâmicas de mineracao, que articulam diretamente os territorios de extracao aos circuitos globais de acumulacao. Na fronteira amazonica, as formas de operacionalizacao do capital alteraram a estruturacao urbana, o relacionamento urbano-rural e causaram enorme impacto sobre a natureza e sobre as camadas mais vulneraveis da populacao. A analise baseia-se na derivacao lefebvriana de urbanizacao extensiva e na nocao de niveis da realidade social; tem o objetivo de explorar as conexoes relacionais do urbano com os niveis global e local e permitir a construcao de paralelos entre a extracao de minerio de ferro na Serra dos Carajas e a exploracao de ouro, na regiao do Vale do Huasco, norte do Chile. Observa-se uma dinâmica urbana regida pela esfera global, e processos paralelos, embrioes de uma nova matriz urbana, na esfera local, centrados na reproducao da vida e na construcao da cidadania.

Pesquisas sobre o urbano amazônico: diretrizes disciplinares X tradição interdisciplinar

This paper proposes to discuss the relevance of research in urban and regional studies, urban planning and urbanism in the Amazon, and the potential contribution of graduate research to updating development strategies designed for this region. The article is structured around the contrast of data from the S & T policies formatted for the Amazon region, and the guidelines that led to the creation, in 1973, of the Center for Advanced Studies about the Amazon. This literature review and data analysis highlights the expansion of graduate study at UFPA in areas that could have the discussion of cities and urbanization as the focus of interest. It appears that instead of including local cities in a possible development agenda for the Amazon region, the disciplinary character of the guidelines imposed upon the region may be consolidating a tradition of treating urban issues in a segmented fashion, rather than promoting a vision which is necessarily historical and interdisciplinary in nature.

A expansão da RM de Belém: reflexões sobre os desdobramentos de investimentos oficiais em habitação

This paper begins with comparisons between the Eastern Amazon urbanization and the production of its urban space, highlighting aspects of the articulation of scales for the understanding of investments distribution in urban areas over the last decade. The investments are concentrated in the Metropolitan Area of Belem, aligned with capitalist strategies, and far from meeting local socio-environmental requirements. The investigated areas were selected according to their insertion in the metropolitan area or its adjacencies, and it was found that recent investments of Programa

A influência do governo federal sobre cidades na Amazônia: os casos de Marabá e Medicilândia

Apesar da existencia de diversos trabalhos academicos sobre o processo de transformacao socioeconomica das cidades da regiao, pouco dessa literatura ofereceu interpretacoes que considerassem a confi guracao espacial como analise. Este artigo procura mostrar a origem e a evolucao de uma cidade como Maraba que serve de contraponto a concepcao do “urbanismo rural” que gestou as cidades de “beira de estrada”, caso de Medicilândia e dos nucleos que hoje compoem a cidade de Maraba. Por ultimo, foi lancado um olhar sobre a explicita especulacao imobiliaria em curso na Cidade Nova, terceiro e mais recente arranjo urbanistico instalado em Maraba.