O processo de expansão e fragmentação urbana do traçado de São Luís: um estudo de caso dos bairros Cohama, Cohaserma e Conjunto Habitacional Vinhais

Abstract

After the transition from the agrarian-exporting economic model to the urbanindustrial one, whose maturation began in the 1940s, Brazil's new technologies experienced an intense urbanization process, which, coupled with population growth in Brazilian cities, contributed to the advancement of metropolization. The concentration of productive activities stimulated the State to make the first changes of a regenerative nature in the "cities of capital" in order to attract foreign investments. The high population concentration in the modernist cities was shaped by workers who migrated from the countryside to the city in the attempt of a better life. However, Brazilian cities, such as São Luís, did not have a satisfactory urban structure to accommodate the entire newly arrived population, which began to be distributed in a disorganized and fragmented way across urban territory. As a consequence, the peripheries were formed, most of which did not have infrastructure, leisure areas or urban facilities. After the emergence of several epidemics caused by the lack of sanitation in the cities, the public power began to treat the issue of popular housing more closely, until, after the 1964 military coup, the National Housing Bank was created. for managing the Housing Finance System. In this context of industrialization and structuring of cities, São Luís began its expansion sustained by substantial investments such as the Carajás railroad, the Itaqui port, Vale and Alumar. In order to regularize the urban space, the Municipality of São Luís therefore drew up the 1974 Master Plan, which, together with the unplanned implementation of the surroundings by the popular housing projects - financed by the Housing Company of Maranhão, COHAB- MA - collaborated for the fragmentation of the city through zoning. In view of what was evidenced, this work aims to understand the process of fragmentation and expansion of the current layout of São Luís, through the neighborhoods of COHAMA, COHASERMA and Vinhais Housing Set. To do this, the diagnosis of the selected perimeter was carried out in order to establish the propositions, based on the road intervention manual of the DNIT, to make feasible articulations between the COHAMA, COHASERMA and Vinhais Housing Set boundaries with less impact and more safety. There were changes in flows, introduction of bicycle lanes and high lanes in COHAMA and Vinhais Housing Set, as well as some expropriations in this area and intervention in traffic between COHAMA and COHASERMA. It was considered that neighborhoods as they are today do not allow punctual and low impact interventions to soften the disarticulation between their limits.