Rethinking the periphery and urban: the new urban neighborhoods in cities Agreste Potiguar
Urban periphery. Urban sprawl. Agreste Potiguar. Daily.
This paper studies the new areas of urban periphery in the cities of Nova Cruz, João Câmara and Santa Cruz, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, whereas these three cities take on a prominent urban center among other small towns that surround them. Although these cities have specific characteristics, the process of occupation and formation of the territory of the mesoregion Agreste Potiguar assigned to them certain similarity in the role they play in their respective microregions, mainly through the commercial activity and the urban services they have. The emergence of new areas of urban periphery in these cities is directly related to the expansion of services and commercial activity in their central areas. Another propellant element of the expansion of numerous real estate enterprises which compose these new areas of periphery is the reach of the housing finance program Minha Casa Minha Vida, besides the facilitations to obtain bank credit and the payment of the lands in parcels, which were offered by the lands allotment companies. What we call new peripheries are the areas located outside the urban area, characteristically marked by obtaining the land or property through a systematized process of commercialization - either via housing program or directly with the developer - with the presence of people of average purchasing power. This form of emergence of new areas of periphery differs from the traditional model of emergence of housing in peripheral areas of these small towns, which happened through the illegal occupation of land, the acquisition process of land tenure, with the massive presence of poor people, unemployed ones and sometimes migrants from rural areas. To a better understanding of the formation and the socio-spatial impacts of the emergence of new peripheries in these cities we highlighted the following themes: urban periphery; city and urban; urban sprawl; everyday life; and small towns. We rely on, especially in the writings from Corrêa (1986; 1987; 2005), Bonduki and Rolnik (1979), Santos (1982; 1988; 1989; 1999), Lefebvre (1975, 1991), Rémy and Voyé (2004), and Bruegman (2011) to discuss the main notes of the literature on these topics. Finally we proceeded by applying the field research in those cities, tracing an analysis of physical characteristics, infrastructure and services, and the population from the areas of new periphery already identified, as well as we investigated the recent changes which occurred in the center of these cities in terms of expansion of the commercial activity and the provision of services. This study of the new urban peripheries in the cities of Nova Cruz, João Câmara and Santa Cruz, reveals the ongoing growth prospects in these cities, plus the emergence of new demands for infrastructure to attend the parcel of population living in those areas.