A construção da cidade na segunda metade do século XX: a forma e o processo

Abstract

This work seeks to understand the urban process and its mechanisms of social and physical space, based on the process of accumulation and circulation of capital and its spatial and temporal dynamics. This preliminary approach aims to construct an interpretive framework of observation of actual cases studies, where the process of construction of the city in the last half of the 20th century will be evaluated, as well as its formalisation in a specific shape. In the first part it is developed an analysis of the accumulation theory developed by Marx in "The Capital", and its realisation crises. The work continues with the study of the physical correspondence of the process of accumulation and capital circulation and how it becomes urbanised, through the transfer of capital - having financial operations as intermediaries - for the creation of physical and social structures as a lucrative way to absorb the surplus produced in a previous step. The theoretical framework ends up with an analysis of the land market and the way it "designs" the location of the capital previously transferred to the constructed environment. In the second half, completing the approach to the proposed topic, it is developed an analysis of four case studies (the cities of Viana do Castelo, Vila do Conde, Guimarães e Santo Tirso), linking theory with existing situations. From the compared observation of the selected cities based on a timeline of three phases of urban expansion, this final part of the work aims to identify the evolution of the city's construction process and of the relations between the forces that intervene in that process, culminating in the fixation of the form, or rather different forms, which together compose the city.