Middle cities, centre and centrality and their implications on fragmentary sociospatial logic in different sociospacial formations: Chapecó, Dourados, Ituiutaba, Mossoró and Marabá

Abstract

Concerning to the first objective of the thematic project (analyzing the transition from the predominantly center-peripheral socio-spatial logic to the fragmentary socio-spatial logic), the postdoctoral fellow should take into consideration the territorial approach (middle cities) and try to understand how it contributes to the production of cities and the differentiation in the urban, trying to identify the social processes that lead to socio-spatial fragmentation through studies on the movement in space, considering urban mobility and accessibility. The proposal, therefore, is investigating possibilities of changes in the passage from a center-peripheral logic to the social-spatial network logic, which structure and articulation occur and result from interscalarity. Even though socio-spatial fragmentation is the focal point of research, it must be understood as a process that allows to understand the way the urban and cities are structured. The fragmentary paradigm will help to explain how spatial logics, dynamics and practices are altered and their effects produce and reproduce the city in the sense of the occurrence of socio-spatial differences and inequalities. The differences that emerge in the study of the city may reduce the possibility of coming and going, both at the city scale and the urban network. With these ideas, it will be necessary to investigate how and if the polycentrality would be reinforced through the quality of the movement, increasing the number of centers and subcenters in the cities, regarding functionality and specialization. This scenario should take into consideration that, in the set of cities to be researched, there are distinct modes of organization and movement regarding the fragmentary paradigm. In operational terms, it will be necessary to verify how the city is produced by separations of different types and shades, provoking the socio-spatial fragmentation and, consequently, the social-spatial differentiation and inequality in its dynamics of altering the contents of the right to the city. (AU)