Socio-spatial fragmentation and Brazilian urbanization: scales, vectors, rhythms, forms and contents FragUrb

Abstract

The socio-spatial differentiation in Brazilian cities has been deepening and it points out to a constitution of the process of socio-spatial fragmentation. Its origin is linked to the predominance of the neoliberal logic and subjections which precede the idea of the right to the city. This project aims to understand, in cities and urban levels, how fragmented socio-spatial logic changes the content of differentiation and inequalities, redefining the meanings of the right to the city. This central objective is unfolded in four analytical planes: i) it goes through the centre-peripheral socio-spatial logic to the fragmentary socio-spatial logic; ii) an interpretation of the socio-spatial fragmentation through the contemporary forms of differentiation and inequality, from practices associated to the urban daily life; iii) the unrolling of the fragmentary socio-spatial logic on public spaces /private spaces; iv) the role of the political institutions, the hegemonic economic agents and the non-hegemonic social subjects. To carry this research out we have chosen five empirical dimensions from which the process of socio-spatial fragmentation are going to be analysed, such as inhabiting, working, consuming, leisure and mobility. Cities of different socio-spatial formations are going to be studied: Chapecó/SC, Dourados/MS, Ituiutaba/MG, Marabá/PA, Maringá/PR, Mossoró/RN, Presidente Prudente/SP, Ribeirão Preto/SP and São Paulo/SP as well as small cities which will be identified in the course of the research. (AU)