URBAN FRAGMENTATION LOGIC: DELIMITING THE CONCEPT OF SOCIO-SPATIAL FRAGMENTATION

Abstract

This article aims to make a critical review of what is of socio-spatial fragmentation, analyzing if it has become a concept, and, a paradigm. Based on literature review, mainly Latin-American and the Brazilian, socio-spatial fragmentation is understood in a plural way: as a process, as urban forms, as a concept, as a paradigm and as a method. Furthermore, the idea of socio-spatial fragmentation, whether as a process or a paradigm, needs to dialogue with other theories that are able to explain current urban changes. Thus, by facing the thesis of complete urbanization of society (or planetary urbanization), the analysis of current capitalism and highlighting the importance (especially in an empiric way) of the analysis of the socio-spatial practices and urban dayly life, this paper pretends, to reinforce the pertinence of the socio-spatial fragmentation to study urban changes, and to point out ways to analyze it.