Restructuring of medium-sized cities in Minas Gerais: analysis of socio-spatial fragmentation in Ituiutaba/MG and Poços de Caldas/MG

• Grant number: 22/05362-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): October 01, 2022
• Effective date (End): February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Márcio José Catelan
• Grantee: Eduardo de Araujo da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia (FCT). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Presidente Prudente. Presidente Prudente , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 18/07701-8 - Socio-spatial fragmentation and Brazilian urbanization: scales, vectors, rhythms, forms and contents FragUrb, AP.TEM

Abstract

In the last decades, socio-spatial fragmentation (as a concept, process, urban form and analytical perspective) has become a topic of notable interest for researchers of urban space, with a multiplication of theoretical and empirical research on this phenomenon. Aiming to contribute to this theme, the main objective of this research is to understand, at the city and urban level, in the contemporary context of multi and interscalarity, if the process of socio-spatial fragmentation is the analytical perspective that explains urban life in the cities of Ituiutaba/MG and Poços de Caldas/MG, while the changes result from the consolidation of roles and functions of these as medium-sized cities. To achieve the aforementioned objective, this research will be supported by four main steps: I) characterization of the notion 'medium-sized cities', approaching the roles and functions of Ituiutaba/MG and Poços de Caldas/MG, in intra and interurban scales; II) to verify the restructuring process of the cities studied, from the historical-geographical survey, in order to conceive the (possible) passage from the predominantly central-peripheral socio-spatial logic to the fragmentary socio-spatial logic; III) identify and analyze, based on interviews with city women, whether there are elements that point to the logic of socio-spatial fragmentation through contemporary forms of differentiation and inequality, considering the spatial practices associated with urban daily life; and IV) identify and analyze, through urban routes, the spatial practices in the cities studied. We hypothesize that, to a lesser or greater degree, the transition from the central-peripheral socio-spatial logic to the fragmentary logic is occurring in these cities, since socio-spatial fragmentation constitutes a new trend in contemporary urbanization on multiple spatial scales.