The Amazon urban weft: a methodological proposal for recognizing a territory of possibilities

Abstract

In the Amazon, urbanized areas, stretching beyond the cities, constitute a complex urban network, with exchanges of economic and sociocultural capital, mediated by the management of socio-biodiversity. Despite holding the potential for an open future, this territory is generally rendered invisible by the instruments and methods used to understand and represent urbanization in the Amazon. Based on a reinterpretation and analysis of the original classes of the situations of the census tracts, combined with environmental data, this article proposes a methodological alternative that seeks to represent the complex and extensive Amazonian urban weft, considering the state of Pará as the spatial focus and three of the state’s distinct integration regions as the study area. The results have demonstrated that the proposed methodology was able to spatially delineate this weft – much larger than the municipal seats – and highlight areas where the urbanization-nature relationship is still preserved and has more chances to evolve.