Expansão urbana de Maceió, Alagoas: caracterização do processo de crescimento territorial urbano em face do plano de desenvolvimento - de 1980 a 2000.

Abstract

This research examines the form of the process of city growth. Empirical research was undertaken on the capital city of the state of Alagoas from its Structural Development Plan in 1981 until the year 2000. The research also explores the relation between the actually existing city during that period and the urban policy which regulated the process of city expansion at that time. It reviews writings on Brazilian urban process, asking about the physical forms and types that have been taking all over the country. It then poposes that the extensive and intensive processes of territorial urban growth in brazilian cities can be described by three physical forms and seven related types. The empirical research was based on the description and analysis of government planning and statistic documents. It has built a series of original tables and graphic schemes based on published oficial maps and zooning documents to identify and asses the trends in the physical growth of the city of Maceio during 20 years. It asks to what extent the actual realization of the Structural Plan coincides with the resulting city. It is shown that the development of physical Maceió, between 1981 and 2000, was a result of a mix of forms and types of territorial growth as proposed by the Structural Development Plan. However the end results differ from the Plan in the intensity of each form and related type when different parts of the city are considered. In summary, the Plan consolidates those forms-types that already existed in the city as a nonplanning tendency at 1980. However it failed to provide provision for other forms-types of physical expansion of the city that in fact occurred throughout the period studied. Accordingly the shape of the process of physical growth of the city of Maceió between 1980 and 2000 did not occur in the way that the Plan provided.