Extended urbanization in and from Brazil

Abstract

The notion of planetary urbanization has recently mobilized different strands in the field of urban studies and has generated extensive debates. This emerging research agenda aims to revise inherited concepts and produce a new vocabulary of urbanization through the construction of an ex-centric perspective that dislocates the focus of analysis from its conventional center: the city. The idea of extended urbanization is thus an imperative concept for it operationalizes this theoretical decentering and permits the exploration of urban questions beyond city-centrism, while encompassing urban agglomerations. This article discusses the conception of extended urbanization. We examine its vital insertion into the contemporary agenda of planetary urbanization and present its original formulation in and from Brazil, developed by Roberto Monte-Mór in the 1980s. In order to foster a productive dialogue between these formulations, we discuss the contradictions embedded within the process of extended urbanization and highlight Monte-Mór’s main theoretical and empirical contributions – particularly regarding urban politics and extended citizenship in the Brazilian Amazon. We contend that extended urbanization as formulated in and from Brazil offers important developments and goes far beyond a mere interesting empirical case in and from Brazil. Instead, it illuminates contemporary questions regarding planetary urbanization.