The transformation of rural space into new real estate developments in Paço do Lumiar (MA)

Abstract

Unfolding from a master's research, the study seeks to reflect on the transformation of rural spaces in the municipality of Paço do Lumiar, a city that is part of the Metropolitan Region of Greater São Luís-MA, highlighting the social implications and contradictions related to closed horizontal condominiums and subdivisions in a municipality that still retains rural characteristics, thus, the transformation of rural spaces into urban spaces that are inserted in a context of privatization of access to land, in which private interests override collective interests. In this way, rural areas submit to the logic of space as a financial asset, transformed into merchandise. Paço do Lumiar has the spatial effects arising from an urbanization that privileges the exchange value in opposition to the social use of the city, and this is observed – in urban expansion, in the construction of closed condominiums and, parallel to this fact, the polarization of poverty and the struggle for housing in the city. This results in the formation of social fragmentation, through the construction of exclusive territories for the wealthier classes, generating a deepening of territorial segregation in the city.