Expansão urbana de Fortaleza pelos loteamentos populares periféricos: o caso do Parque Alto Alegre - Maracanaú - CE

Abstract

Comprehending the production and the expansion on the periphery of the city is a hard task. The term periphery arises in urban studies to account for a reality that was imposed due to the growth of the cities. This difficulty of understanding lies in the fact that urban expansion happens faster and faster, redefining limits and uses of the space called periphery. The opening of urban allotments was an important process in the urban expansion and the formation of the periphery in many cities in Brazil. The soil has left its rural use to undertake social urban functions through the parceling of large fields. Since the soil use has been changed, the ways the owners of the lands obtain profit have changed as well. In this new context, the land has a new value which is produced socially by different producers of urban space. However, this value belongs to the minority who has the ownership of the land. The high value of the land prevents many people from purchasing land in a regular allotment with basic urban infrastructure. Illegal allotment (clandestine or irregular) is an alternative that these people have in order to have access to land. This study aims to analyze the process of urban expansion of Fortaleza, a regional metropolis in the Brazilian Northeast, considering the space producing agents present in popular peripherals subdivisions. The procedures adopted in the research were: literature review on the social production of urban space; institutional research, with critical reading of the laws pertaining to land subdivision and Municipal Master Plans of Fortaleza and Maracanaú and analysis of database Registers of Allotments in the two towns; and a case study in Parque Alto Alegre allotment, with quantitative and qualitative interviews. This allotment is located in Maracanaú and borders the southwestern outskirts of Fortaleza. It has many deficiencies in relation to infrastructure, equipment, urban services and urban mobility. The discussion on the expansion of popular allotments in Fortaleza and in Fortaleza Metropolitan Region enabled some conclusions, such as the popular allotments are not only a reality of Fortaleza, they have become a metropolitan issue since the 1980s. Building their houses has been the main process in which poor people have acquired their own habitation. However, home- ownership does not solve the housing problems, since deficiency of environmental sanitation and mobility difficulties are also characteristics of the allotments on the outskirts of metropolis.