City Overhaul: Disintegration of Neighborhoods by Urban Renewal
The Amazon region, renowned for its lush forests and diverse wildlife, has a rich and complex history of urbanization and colonization. This development pattern, however, has raised concerns about the region's resilience and adaptability to contemporary crises, especially climate crises.
Urbanization, adopted as a colonization strategy by the Pombaline government, led to the establishment of towns and cities on the sites of former missions. This process, coupled with the so-called economic cycles of exploitation and export of natural resources, has had a profound impact on the region.
Prior to Portuguese colonization, human settlements in the Amazon were small, closely located, and connected by rivers and land routes. With the arrival of colonizers, these settlements underwent significant changes. Indigenous villages were incorporated into religious missions, and their original locations were preserved despite changes in settlement layout.
Church missionaries played a central role in the Christianization of indigenous peoples and influenced the relocation and transformation of indigenous settlements. This often resulted in the concentration of dispersed indigenous groups into centralized mission settlements, significantly altering their traditional settlement patterns and social structures.
The prosperity of the rubber cycle enabled the importation of sanitation solutions, energy supply, road paving, transportation infrastructure, and the private subdivision of land. This period saw the city as the embodiment of urbanization, the space where new urban planning techniques should be applied.
However, this extensive occupation has its drawbacks. It degrades ecosystems by incorporating native territories and dispossessing communities of their means of production, driving them into poverty. High-cost macro-drainage systems are enabled by the gradual filling in of floodplains, making these areas commercially viable.
In the 20th century, Brazilian colonization led to widespread deforestation, redefining the forest as a rural space. This transformation displaced native populations to the outskirts of cities. Today, indigenous peoples continue to preserve the legacy of pre-colonial urbanization along the large rivers, supplying cities with food.
The cities of Manaus and Macapá concentrate 60% and 30% of their respective state populations, while Belém experiences population loss to its metropolitan surroundings. In Manaus, the Indigenous population is growing, and in cities such as Santarém, conflicts between native interests and commodity producers indicate control of both urban transformation and changes in rural spaces by the same groups.
The largest settlements were strategically positioned at the confluence of two rivers for territorial control. These dispersed regional formations in the Amazon, characterized by green interstices, are being dismantled and replaced by cities that are losing vegetation cover both internally and externally.
This historical overview underscores the complex relationship between urbanization, colonization, and the environment in the Amazon. As the region continues to face challenges related to climate change and biodiversity loss, understanding this history is crucial for informing sustainable development strategies.
