ALEXANDRE EDUARDO SANTOS
Abstract:
The most varied ways in which the urban phenomenon manifests itself through the production of space, enabled the formation of cities, which go beyond the political and administrative limits, thus identifying the existence of an intermediate scale between urban space and the urban network that reveals itself in the form of city clusters. This intermediate urban scale, in which city clusters are present, presents different ways of intelligibly grasping the phenomena that manifest themselves there. The concepts of conurbation and urban agglomeration are the most used to define urban groupings, however, these concepts have different meanings: conurbation from the autonomy of cities; conurbation as coalescence of urban areas; urban cluster as urban center; and urban agglomerate as a complex that involves more than one city. Thus, the general goal of this work is to understand the spatial dynamics of the clustering of small cities formed by Barra do Garças-MT, Pontal do Araguaia-MT and Aragarças-GO cities, verifying if the grouping presents characteristics of conurbation or agglomeration. urban Specifically, the goal was: to analyze the bibliography that deals with city clusters, listing the characteristic spatial elements of urban conurbation and agglomeration; investigate the genesis and evolution of the cities that form the cluster; analyze the spatial dynamics of the cluster, considering population, economy, urban facilities, management and spatial interactions; and to verify the spatial contradiction between cities as fragmented and socioeconomically integrated political-administrative units. The methodological procedures of the research were: bibliographic research, secondary data collection and field work, as well as analysis and treatment of empirical and documentary material. Finally, the data articulated with the theory were analyzed in order to understand the spatial dynamics of clustering in relation to the characteristics of conurbation and urban agglomeration phenomena, thus allowing to risk a definition for the clustering that involves the investigated cities.
