Desenvolvimento sócio-espacial de cidades de médio porte no Rio Grande do Sul : estudo de caso de Santo Ângelo (RS).

Abstract

This scientific paper has the purpose of analyzing the urban planning processes and the strategies to organize both the urban and regional area in towns. This study used as reference/example Santo Ângelo, a small town in the northeast part of Rio Grande do Sul state, which is best known as the capital of the Missões Region. The lack of theoretical debates about both urban planning and the processes of the development of social spaces in towns in our country encourage a critical reflexion about these realities. This analyses use the federal, state and municipal existing urban policies as background, and has its focus on town master plan, considering the experiences made in Santo Angelo in three different moments of its history: 1972, 1982, 1997,being the last one created prior to the polices proposed by the federal law of the Statute of the Town. Making use of a dialectic method of analyses, we developed a descriptive-analytic approach to Santo Ângelo’s reality and the relation between the town and its region, the main historical aspects in its land occupation and the processes of urban planning developed emphasizing its masters plans. According to the analyses of official documents from the City Hall, as well as making use of cartography and the laws and plans elaborated during its development, we can observe that party-political issue affects directly both the elaboration of planning strategies and the development of social-space in town, so that many times individual and economical interests overcome the collective and social assumptions in cities and towns.