Urban Tropical Forest: Where Nature and Human Settlements Are Assets for Overcoming Dependency, but How Can Urbanisation Theories Identify These Potentials?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the extensive urbanisation of the Eastern Amazon, where human settlements date back to an era when total cooperation existed between man and nature , a time when land, water, forest and people were perceived as inseparable parts of the whole. However, this harmonious situation has ceased to exist following several episodes of colonisation and modernisation. During the last initiative to integrate the region with the rest of the country, it was classified under the social divisions of Brazilian labour as agrarian and suitable for the mineral extraction industry. Furthermore, the recent overlap between the interests of privately owned global companies and federal investments in logistics, and of the pattern of Portuguese colonisation, has led to a process of hybrid urbanisation. The historical pattern of population dispersion has also suffered modifications whereby connections have been established that link previously isolated settlements to national centres and global metropolises. Such practices have acted against all current data on climate change and have disrespected nature and the environment to such an extent that selective modernization and its reverse, informal occupation, have increased the spread of deforestation, pollution, the siltation of rivers and the reduction of surface water volumes. This article demonstrates how these transformations have been responsible for the exclusion of those groups forced onto the margins of modernisation: people born in the region who depend on the biophysical base for their livelihood, including indigenous peoples, caboclos (the offspring of indigenous and Portuguese peoples), peasants and traditional communities who live in rural areas or were pushed into urban areas once the countryside had been restructured. The article also seeks to expose local resistance to this process, thereby revealing how extensive urbanisation may evolve from mere economic integration towards comprehensive urbanisation, capable of creating new forms of citizenship and a respect for nature , thereby transforming it into the extensive naturalisation of the urban .