Reestruturação metropolitana e regional: integração entre o leste metropolitano e o norte fluminense

Abstract

This research intends to investigate to what extent the changes in the productive structures that occurred in the metropolitan east of Rio de Janeiro and in the north of the state of Rio de Janeiro, after the construction of large investment projects, contribute to the construction of technical networks and a territorial reorganization directed to a new spatialization of the economic activities, inducing the formation of new spatial arrangements. The present research seeks to understand dynamization and changes in the territory made possible by a strengthening (of some existing networks, such as BR 101, part of the “coastal line” railway line, and electricity transmission lines) and the formation of new networks. (gas pipelines, airports...) in the integration of the metropolitan region of the state with the north of Rio de Janeiro, strongly linked by the activity of the oil and gas sector. The State of Rio de Janeiro, after a long political-economic stagnation, began in 2006, national development policies to encourage production based, streamlining the oil and gas production chain. The use of (fixed) logistical infrastructures that could accommodate the large flow resulting from large installations produced a territorial reorganization in the State of Rio de Janeiro. It is considered that the insertion of these large investment projects had a regional effect that began to influence the production of space that in turn formed new territorialities and new circulation spaces. The strengthening of road axes in the metropolitan region, such as the BR101 (Niterói and Campos de Goytacazes, currently being duplicated), the Arco Metropolitano (connecting the peripheral area of the metropolitan region), and the insertion of thermoelectric plants (powered by natural gas), gas pipelines, electricity transmission lines are current technical networks that have come to integrate different regions of the state and together form part of the country's oil and gas circuit. Technical networks are instruments that constitute a modernization, and may have different functions, providing a spatial logic of production. Therefore, they are crucial for the process of spatial restructuring, expanding the fluminense metropolitanization process and enabling a future integration with the northern region of the state. Therefore, the metropolitan dynamism has had considerable expansion after the construction and expansion of new technical networks. In this sense, this research is dedicated to understanding how the different forms of intervention in productive structures interfere in the territory, create or dynamize the integration between these regions. Given this scenario, the role of the State has been increasingly fundamental, as it is the basis for the production of space according to the particularities of the logical expansion of spatial production circuits. There is, therefore, a movement that starts from the concentration of power in the metropolis, while there is an expansion of these technical networks to the periphery and the interior of the state treated as the operational base of the flows. Therefore, there is a movement of dispersion and concentration in the function of these regions. It reflects, then, how to think of a territorial organization aimed at effective public policies in the face of the effects that spatial arrangements have caused in the region.