Land and urban land structure: study of the production of urban space in the lands of the Catholic Church in Pau dos Ferros - RN (1990-2016)
Land tenure; Ecclesiastical Property; Urban structure; Socio-spatial configuration; Social agents.
Pau dos Ferros presents an urban land structure loaded with meanings of the past, since the work of the Catholic Church was decisive in the conformation of the city. Land grants were made to the parish to erect the first chapel. During the twentieth century, the relations between the agents that produced urban space became the signposts of urban transformations. The municipality receives investments of public infrastructure for educational equipment. The urban expansion was evidenced, having its reflexes, notably in the central neighborhoods. The patrimony of the parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, now with approximately 5,000 more lands, has been sold and traded in transactions between parish, population and registry office with the transfer of full domain or dominial use. In this sense, there are two scenarios: 1 - More comprehensively, those who acquire the land or already own it, even with a consolidated building, only have a private deed, having only the possession, the dominial use, without conditions for the regularization and enforcement of full control. 2 - With the insertion of new agents and investments in the socio-political and educational field, new landowners acquired land and proceeded with the urban land subdivision. From this juncture, three agents (key elements) are identified: the Catholic Church, represented by the Parish of Our Lady of Conception; the State and population. This relationship built the city fragmented, pointing to the central question of the research: how the Catholic Church in its relationship with the City Hall and developers (real estate developers) conformed the parceling and irregular occupation in the lands of the Parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceição in Pau dos Irons? In response, the hypotheses of the work are highlighted: 1 - The lease system of the useful domain of urban land by the Catholic Church was consolidated as a guiding element of the logic of land subdivision in Pau dos Ferros occupying the role of absentee urban legislation; 2 - The spatial structuring of Pau dos Ferros, by the sociopolitical influence of the Catholic Church, remained under the dominion only in the urban nucleus of the city through the investments of urban infrastructure in the late twentieth and early XXI. From this plot, it is understood that the interests of the public and private agents of the urban space and the specificities of the ecclesiastical land structure are presented as object of work study. The general objective: to understand the relationship between the Parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceição and other agents, the process and conformation of the urban land parceling in ecclesiastical lands, in order to understand the urban structure of Pau dos Ferros. The sources of data used were diverse, such as official documents and records of the city council, manuscripts and publications of social and political memory of the city, parish documents and literature on the subject. The thesis in its chapters discusses the current scenario, punctuating the production of the urban space by the new agents in the lands of the church and the increase of the rent of the land in Pau dos Ferros, period of 1990 to 2016 in the understanding of the spatial structure of the city.