Expansão metropolitana e novos negócios imobiliários na alvorada do século XXI

Abstract

This research aims to discuss the metropolitan expansion of Fortaleza towards its surroundings spaces, highlighting the role of real estate in the process. It was observed that the last twenty years has seen growth of new spatial expansion patterns of real estate production to the market of Fortaleza surroundings. It has led to new and significant transformations of Metropolitan Region of Fortaleza (RMF). The current expansion joints both old and new spatialities and results of social, economic and political changes that have occurred at different geographical scales. The research took place in a historical moment when the real estate business became more important to support and develop the new economy, conventionally called globalised and financialised, characterized by cyclical crises. The research employs the real estate to analyse the metropolitan expansion, defines new real estate objects, characterizes the agents involved and also investigates the redefinition of segregation forms and socio-spatial fragmentation in the expansion regions of Fortaleza (RMF). Different data sources in the research include the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the Central Bank, some institutions that operate in the real estate market of RMF, and also interviews with agents working in production of new real estate objects in the areas of expansion. The investigation confirmed the growing role of private agents, who produce new forms of urbanization, in the processes of metropolitan expansion of Fortaleza. The important agents of expansion are entrepreneurs who act on a national scale and local investors that have offered new residential typologies defined as gated communities. These trends of the metropolitan expansion have shown similarities to processes seen in other cities of Latin America since the late twentieth century.