Dispersion and urban mobility in Brazil: Study of an urban agglomeration

Abstract

We analyze the trends of the contemporary city of expansion and dispersion allied to urban mobility, in a Brazilian urban cluster located in the Northwest of Paraná, Brazil. We approach concepts of diffuse city, dispersion and urban fragmentation reflecting on the regional conformation tendencies, and the role of urban mobility. To do so, we investigated the history of territory formation, analyzed land use mappings, regional axes, and population, fleet, and population displacement data. We observed that the polo municipality concentrates the economic activities and the commuting movements, increasingly dependent on individual passenger transportation. With the installation of large poles of attraction in peripheral areas, from regional flows that produce new centralities, one can perceive the tendency of abandoning the strong polarizing character to relations of more horizontal flows.