O urban space can be defined as the space of cities, the set of activities that take place in the same local integration, with the juxtaposition of houses and buildings, economic, social and cultural. The city space is, in this way, a representative landscape of the geographic space, a territory of political practices and a place of worldviews and cultural mediations.
However, a distinction needs to be made between the urban and the cities. There are cities, for example, that are not considered urban, as they have a small number of inhabitants and a low economic dynamic. For IBGE, cities with less than 20 thousand inhabitants are considered as rural space. Furthermore, in the agrarian environment, some practices and characteristics of the urban space are evident, which leads us to believe that the urban transcends (goes beyond) the space of cities.
In the meantime, we can say that the urban space it is economically produced, but socially experienced, that is, appropriated and transformed based on rational as well as affective actions.
Brazilian geographer Roberto Lobato Corrêa affirms, in several of his works, that the urban space is fragmented, articulated; it is also the conditioning factor of social actions and their reflection in a dialectical interaction. Furthermore, according to the same author, it can be understood as a set of symbols and as a field of struggles, mainly involving social classes.
With the development of techniques, man began to live in society and, thus, began to build their cities, their living spaces. The oldest cities date from around 9,000 BC. a., that is the case of the cities of Jericho (Palestine) and of Damascus (in Syria). However, for most of human history, the population was mostly rural.
Thus, with the development of industrial relations, the process of urbanization – growth of urban space in relation to rural space – became the main representation of modernity. Thus, we have evidence of how industrialization interferes and accentuates the urbanization process.
Before the First Industrial Revolution, about 90% of the population of different societies was rural. Currently, with the Third Industrial Revolution underway, humanity has reached the urban majority for the first time, according to 2010 data from the United Nations.
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In the modern era, we can say that the process of urban space growth occurs through two main elements arguments, the attractive factors and the repulsive factors.
Per attractive factors we understand the growth of cities based on the supposed benefits they offer, especially those related to growth industrial, in which a good part of the rural population is attracted by the offer of labor, and the possibilities of growth and emancipation social. These elements were predominant in countries today considered developed, which underwent the classical industrialization process. Among the cities, we can mention the cases of London, New York, Paris and others.
Per repulsive factors it is understood the growth of cities as a result of the departure of workers from the countryside, due to the mechanization of agricultural production or land concentration. Urbanization caused by repulsive factors tends to be faster and reveals a greater number of social problems, characteristic of underdeveloped countries. Among the cities, we can mention the cases of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, among others.
Thus, through the attractive and repulsive factors, we can see that the urban space grows, mainly, with the migration of the countryside-city type, which, when it occurs en masse, is called rural exodus. When this process provides a disorderly growth of cities, that is, when this growth runs away from the control of the State and governments, there is the emergence of serious urban social problems, of which stand out: the slums, irregular occupations, poverty rates, violence and many others.
In addition to social problems, accelerated urbanization can highlight the emergence of urban environmental problems, among them, the heat islands, at acid rain and the thermal inversion.
Therefore, even being the expression of the advances of modernity, urban space can also be the main evidence of its contradictions.
By Me. Rodolfo Alves Pena
