Urbanization and medium-sized cities in Brazil and the United States of America. Fragmentation and socio-spatial inequalities on multiple scales.

• Grant number: 24/03535-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: November 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Márcio José Catelan
• Grantee: Márcio José Catelan
• Host Investigator: Patricia de Toledo Basile
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências, Tecnologia e Educação. Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Ourinhos. Ourinhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Indiana University, United States

Abstract

Through this research project, we propose to articulate contents regarding the socio-spatial fragmentation process in medium-sized cities of two distinct countries, Brazil and the United States of America. The objective is to understand the relationship between socio-spatial fragmentation focusing on the dimensions of living, mobility, and work in medium-sized cities in these two countries. We aim to encompass a theoretical-conceptual content of everyday life in medium-sized cities articulated under these three dimensions, representative of the socio-spatial differentiation and inequality to be revealed in the specificities of these countries. The goal is to establish, in a comparative study, how city production results from multiple scales, establishing a movement of continuities and discontinuities in the city and its relationship with the urban network, namely socio-spatial fragmentation as a process manifested in cities whose urban structure and roles are both multi and inter-scalar, with reinforcement at the regional scale. A quantitative-qualitative methodology, whose methodological procedures range from the survey of a theoretical framework that allows knowing and analyzing the cities to be studied to fieldwork with conducting interviews, collecting data and information on urban mobility, and conducting accompanied urban routes home-work-home (Jesus, Catelan, and Calixto, 2022). The analytical framework we outline for this research refers to the analysis of the transition from a center-periphery logic to a fragmented logic in the context of planetary urbanization (Brenner, 2018; Legroux, 2021; Sposito, 2020).