A produção do espaço urbano de pequenas cidades no contexto regional de inserção da Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul

Abstract

This research is part of the discussion about the socio-spatial structuring processes of small Brazilian cities as from the large undertaking installation. The thesis aims to understand the process of the small cities urban space production from the action of real estate capital, in view of the demand expansion expectation for housing and the consequent increase in prices of rental and sale of real estate. It is adopted as a study case the experience of the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul, a public institution of higher education created by the REUNI, which has a multi-campus structure comprised of six campuses located in a network of small and medium-sized cities of the three states of the South Region. As an object of study was chosen the urban space of the three small cities that make up the institutional network of UFFS (Laranjeiras do Sul/PR, Realeza/PR and Cerro Largo/RS). The methodological procedures involved the collection of quantitative data related to, among others, the displacement of people and materials assets generated by the UFFS, the real estate market movements obtained from newspapers classified and contracts made available by real estate companies, to the process of urban expansion through decrees approval of lots, and qualitative semi-structured interviews with the main producers of the urban space of these cities and a questionnaire addressed to the employees of the UFFS. Were analyzed the transformations in the urban space of the small cities studied, after the installation of the UFFS campuses, as well as the changes of the urban spaces production model, evidencing new agents as preponderant in the structuring process of these cities. The increase expectation for housing demand generated by the campuses presence, places these cities in a regional circuit of the economy, attracting external agents. These become responsible for the reproduction of the larger cities production model, based on the exploitation of urban land by real estate capital. The developed analyzes allow us to affirm that the urban space of small cities that receive large public enterprises organized regionally, becomes susceptible to the action of the capital that acts of articulated form in diverse scales and that defines the logic of the urban space production.