Nova Iguaçu : absorção de uma célula urbana pelo grande Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This study deals with one of the most crucial problems in Urban Geography, the growth of the great metropolis, its expansion over and beyond administrative limits, and its coalescence with small neighbouring urban centers, as illustrated by the spreading of Rio de Janeiro northwards towards the Guanabara Baixada.

            In the introduction, the author sets out to analyze the process of integrating the Guanabara Baixada to Greater Rio de Janeiro, touching on the following aspects: a) the contribution or negative aspect of natural environmental factors; b) the position of the Baixada as intermediary area between the mountainous hinterland and a port with outstanding advantages; c) the exceptionally important role of the ways of circulation, which led the city to progress in this direction, stressing that despite the multiplicity and increasing importance of the highways that cross this region, the railways are still the main agents of expansion of the urban area in this direction; d) the various ways in which the process of urbanization of the Baixada is being pursued: spontaneous enlargement of agglomerations around railway stations, housing developments, industrial nuclei and the growth of small, long-existing urban centers arising out of new functions rela ted to the life of the metropolis. In closing, the author indicates a section to the north of Rio de Janeiro, beyond the administrative limits of the city but now completely integrated in the urban area of the metropolis and made up of the municípios of Nilópolis, São João de Meriti and the southern part of the municípios of Nova Iguaçu and Caxias; this section is characterized by high density of population and continuity of built-up area. A sudden drop in density (1158 to 235 inhab.per sq. mile) in the município of Nova Iguaçu marks the end for the urban area, i.e. the limit of the agglomeration considered as a concentrated group, the different elements of which are contiguous (GEORGE, 1952). This limit also marks the end of the suburban area, where another area begins that is characterized by discontinuity of the centers of population, and widely scattered residential and industrial buildings. This zone used to have a low population density, but the index of population increase rose sharply between 1920 and 1950 as a result of the development of commuter suburbs, industrial centers and housing developments in the area. In this case, the growth of the population was the result of direct influence of the metropolis, and the region may rightly be termed an urban pioneer fringe (TRICART, 1950). The absorption of the rural medium by the advance of a great metropolis can certainly be described as urban pioneering and, as in all pioneer zones, the master agglomerations are situated on the limit between the two areas: the really densely occupied area and that in which occupation is under way. In the line of expansion of the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro towards the Guanabara Baixada, just at the junction of the urban area and the urban pioneer fringe, stands Nova Iguaçu, the township with which this survey is concerned. Its status as the seat of an ancient and important município, its position on the outskirts of the urban area, its past rich in content and independence, and its evolution to the point of becoming a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, are such that a study of its development makes for a better understanding of the way in which the urban type occupation of a broad section of the Guanabara Baixada has been achieved.

            In the first chapter, the author describes Nova Iguaçu as it now is: a peripheral suburb (SEGADAS SOARES, 1960) of Rio de Janeiro, characterized by its great importance as a residential section for city-working commuters, by its limited industrial activity (small industry catering to the nearby suburban market) and by being a sub-center (GIST & HALBERT, 1956) for the spreading sector of the suburban zone of the metropolis, with 1038 commercial establishments, 5 high schools, 6 banks, 40 doctors, etc. Its multiple functions justify its classification as a diversified suburb (CHAUNCY HARRIS, 1943), i. e. a suburb that, while exercising a predominantly residential function, shows a certain amount of industrial development and acts as an important servicing center for lesser suburbs.

            In the second chapter, the author points out that, though functionally and spatially integrated in the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro, Nova Iguaçu may be distinguished from the other peripheral suburbs of this city by the fact that it has kept a personality of its own, given it by its urban substratum and its lasting function of servicing center for a rural zone. Analyzing the urban past of Nova Iguaçu, the author studies its evolution since it began in the eighteenth century as a sugar plantation, with the name Maxambomba, up to its emergence as a center of the citrus fruit growing economy in the Baixada in the second quarter of the twentieth.

            The genesis and evolution of the settlement has gained much from the way in which it is situated at the point of contact between three morphologically different areas: the plain, the Madureira range and the foothills of the Serra do Mar escarpment, on the edge of a consolidated strip of land at the base of the elevations that rim the Baixada. This ridge was followed by an eighteenth century road leading to the mountainous hinterland and again by the railway in the nineteenth century. Maxambomba, sugar mill in the eighteenth and railway station in the nineteenth had become by the turn of the latter century the seat of the município (Or county) of Nova Iguaçu. The prosperity of this area, linked to the spread of orange growing for export to the European markets, was to turn Maxambomba, with its name changed to Nova Iguaçu, into an important packing and shipping center of citrus fruits, as well as a servicing center for a population that would increase amazingly as a result of the land being split up into small truck farms and of the working system in the orange groves, which required large numbers of wage-earners and cropfarmers.

            Despite the increase in the rural population and the prosperity generated by citrus fruit growing, Nova Iguaçu failed to gain status as an urban center, enlarge appreciably its urban area and increase its population, specialize its commerce and multiply its industries, acquire a more complex structure and stand out from the rank and file of such centers. It was too close to Rio de Janeiro and this ·restricted its urban functions and even withdrew its influence over part of the município of which it was the seat, for the metropolis soon stretched out grasping fingers for the fringe areas to use them as commuter suburbs to house the city workers. It has been seen that the life and prosperity of Nova Iguaçu was intimately related to growing oranges and marketing them abroad, and the whole economic structure collapsed when exports were cut off at the outbreak of the second world war. However, Nova Iguaçu was to prove an excellent example of the force of resistance, capacity of renovation and plasticity of urban groups described by SORRE (1952, p. 179). Unchecked by the ruin of the citrus fruit industry, the town progressed by modifying its essential features, attracting new customers, seeking in other elements, not affected by the drama o f the land, a source of prosperity. These elements seem to have been its position athwart the main trunkline linking what was then the capital of the country to the interior, electrified on the verge of the crisis, in 1938, and its position on the edge of a spreading plain suitable for the future housing and industrial developments of a metropolis that was growing ever faster. The partition of the land into residential and manufacturing lots cleared the way for the onrush of real estate development at the end of the war, that was to involve a1l of the citrus fruit growing area. In the city of Nova Iguaçu, the urban area was enlarged in two ways: by spontaneous subdivision of the truck farms that surrounded the former settlement and by development of the extensive holdings near the city. Prospective residents were attracted to Nova Iguaçu by cheap land, frequent rapid transportation to the metropolis and a well-equipped system of services, as a result of its established position as city and seat of a município. All these advantages were enhanced when the modern highway inland, built in 1951, passed through Nova Iguaçu with enormous significance for its growth as a residential suburb. Between 1940 and 1950, the urban outline Of Nova Iguaçu was twice officially extended and its population rose from 20,598 to 5·8,533 inhabitants.

            On taking over its new function of residential suburb to the metropolis, Nova Iguaçu abandoned other functions to which it owed its position as a city: packing and shipping station for the citrus fruit production and shipping and receiving station for goods and products of trade and industry for the city and the município, as a result of the increasing disorganization of traffic by rail and the advantages and facilities of road transport since the building of the new highway. If, however, owing to the decay of the citrus fruit economy, combined with the use of a new means of transport and a new way of circulation, Nova Iguaçu has lost a part of its functions as an intermediary, it has kept others, and to the preservation of these latter are due the city characteristics still in evidence. In the organization of a region, a city does not merely play the role of collecting-point for the agricultural output or distributor of goods for its own supply. It exercises, above all the function of selling merchandise and providing services for a population that does not reside in the urban area. Nova Iguaçu bas retained and even improved and extended this kind of intermediary function, and the improvement of the highway system has enabled it to serve more distant areas, the population of which has likewise considerably increased with the rapid increase in the number of suburban communities that are springing up around the railway stations. Furthermore, the permanence of a type of customer connected with rural activities is another of the more remarkable peculiarities of Nova Iguaçu and gives it a certain originality compared with the other peripheral suburbs of the metropolis. At the end of this chapter, the author stresses the fact that it is the two elements analyzed therein – the urban substratum, arising from the exercise of many important functions in the past, which were essentially urban, and its present condition as interconnecting center for the wide area not yet integrated in the urban pattern of the metropolis – that together guarantee the individuality of Nova Iguaçu, despite its being already incorporated in the suburban area of Greater Rio de Janeiro.

            The third contains an analysis of the townscape of Nova Iguaçu in which each zone covers forms of the present-day organization of urban life and corresponds to one phase of the transformation of the settlement into one of the most important suburbs of Greater Rio de Janeiro. Three such zones are distinguished: the "Center", an intermediate zone and a peripheral zone. The "Center' still occupies the part nearest the station, the oldest part of town, although development has tended to spread directly away from it. Some of the features of the centers of populous cities are to be observed in this central area: the gradual disappearance of the private residence, the maintenance of old buildings on account of their over-valuation, the growing tendency to replace old houses by multi-storey structures, an increasing specialization and greater refinement of commercial installations. The rapid evolution of the city transformed the citrus  fruit growers' settlement into an active "center", imposing certain modifications but preserving that aspect of an old town in a new agglomeration, or in other words a relic of the past that fails to harmonize with the dynamic urge of the central or downtown area.

            The intermediate zone stands out individually against the urban background, not as a uniform townscape, but on the contrary by its conflicting variety, which differentiates it from the two neighbouring zones that are more homogeneous in morphology and structure. This area has a residential function within Nova Iguaçu, but also houses a great many of the local industries. The zone was built up on an area of less intensive land occupation, and there still remain traces of the ownership pattern of fair-sized units corresponding to the truck farms of pre-urban days. The expansion over this area has gone ahead spontaneously, i.e. not by means of housing developments, and the reason for this lies partly in the social and economic status of the landowners – small and medium citrus fruit growers – that favored individual "colonization" (TRICART, 1950). Although many of the manufacturing plants of the first phase of industrial development in Nova Iguaçu were set up in this area, the residential function predominates and is marked by an absence of extremes, i.e. neither shanties nor fine residences. Such extremes are to be found outstandingly in the third or peripheral zone, which, precisely because it is the most recent, has attracted at the same time a wealthy class, originatiug with the recent progress of Nova Iguaçu, and a very poor class, that carne to settle down on the huge developments opened up there.

            The ,peripheral zone is characterized by the sub-division of the land into allotments or developments on the site of the extensive properties that formerly surrounded the small holdings of the orange growers. Some of the more recent industrial plants are also located in this zone on account of the high cost of the remaining empty lots in the intermediate zone and their cramped dimensions. This area is as yet only thinly built up and the developments of which it is composed correspond closely to the pre-urban agrarian structure, inasmuch as it is easy to recognize, in the area covered by each development and its distinctive pattern of townplanning, the area of the large property from which it originated and whose name it frequently bears.

            The result of the extraordinary growth of Nova Iguaçu in the last twenty-five years is that the urban outline has been extended officially three times in succession (in 1938, 1949 and 1958) . As the town spread, it camne up against the expansion of other small settlements clustering around tlle neighbouring railway stations, and they were welded together into a composite whole so that the whole of the plain stretching to the east of the Central do Brasil Railway as far as the Rio d'Ouro Railway is now densely built up, and it is impossible to perceive the transition between areas originating in the expansion from different stations, since there are no morphological peculiarities to distinguish them.

            The growth of Nova Iguaçu proceeded largely over the plain that extends eastward, because expansion in other directicms was met by obstacles of a topographical nature such as the steep slopes of the Serra de Madureira, in the Southwestern Sector, and the hilly region beginning to the northwest of Nova Iguaçu, where the hillsides rise to more than 165 feet, confining urban expansion to the level spaces between them. The various possibilities of expansion of the settlement in the different directions have led to great dissymmetry in layout. Nowadays, Nova Iguaçu is developing on three sites: at the foot of the Serra, where the original settlement was founded, on the plain that spreads to the east, and on the foothills of the neighbouring range where development is more recent. Each Of these sites is marked by different layouts, that clearly show the spontaneity or planning with which urban expansion has gone forward, as well as the advantages and problems of each of the sites incorporated in the built-up area.

            In concluding, the author tackles the general problem of characterizing and denominating these fractions of the continuous area of the metropolis which have names of their own and local institutions. The problem presents no difficulty with regard to municipal seats like São João de Meriti and Nilópolis, which grew up and gained their official status through the function of housing the excess population Of Rio de Janeiro. They may be qualified simply as peripheral residential (or commuter) suburbs, or in the expressive terminology of QUEEN & THOMAS (1939, p. 285), residentia1 overflow suburbs. These suburbs are very readily absorbed by the metropolis, which is not the case of those that have other functions or originated in the growth of independent urban nuclei, such as Caxias and Nova Iguaçu. The special features of the latter do not allow them to be grouped indiscriminately in the above category, in spite of their undeniable importance as residential sections for city workers.

            Nova Iguaçu, the object of this study, when considered solely in the light of the role it plays in relation to the metropolis, is a peripheral diversified suburb (HARRIS, 1943, p. 6). The urban phenomenon being, however, many-faceted and essentially dynamic, the outright classification of Nova Iguaçu in the suburban functional category would imply a failure to take cognizance of certain important aspects, which is why the author of this study has gone into the process whereby the urban nucleus achieved spatial and functional integration in the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro without loss of individuality. In this case, it is important to determine the extent to which Nova Iguaçu has been absorbed by the metropolis from an analysis of a series of elements that are likely to lead to a closer evaluation. These elements are: spatial integration, daily work relationship, degree of internal differentiation, degree of internal cohesion or community character, and influence over areas outside the built-up area.             Spatial integration is of great importance, for it is intimately linked to the suburban condition, i.e. to the integrating part of the agglomeration. The notion of an urban cell, of a town, necessarily implies the idea of separation by empty spaces from other urban units. Spatially, Nova Iguaçu has already been absorbed by Greater Rio de Janeiro, since it is now comprised within the urban space thereof. The large proportion of the population of Nova Iguaçu that is involved in the daily shift to and from the metropolis, shows its dependence thereon as a labour market, and likewise its condition of residential suburb. The degree of dependence or self-sufficiency is· also very important in evaluating the degree of absorption. The farther the distance from the central area, the stronger the tendency to self-sufficiency, and Nova Iguaçu, 22 miles from the heart of the metropolis, is an example of this. Among its functions taken as a whole, it is that of sub-center that reveals its high degree of self-sufficiency, in spite of its evident dependence on the metropolis in various ways. The degree of internal differentiation is another element to be considered, for a thoroughly differentiated structure points not only to a multiple-function suburb, but also and principally to one that pre-existed as an urban center, variety that distinguishes it from its neighbours. The degree of internal cohesion or community character of these fractions of the built-up area serves likewise to individualize them. A social group, occupying contiguous territory, with local institutions, presenting a force of internal cohesion and hence distinct from the neighbouring suburbs, is an urban community (QUEEN & THOMAS, 1939, p. 274). There is no doubt that Nova Iguaçu is an urban community clearly individualized within Greater Rio de Janeiro. Finally, the influence that Nova Iguaçu exerts on areas situated outside the urban area of the metropolis is an aspect of major importance: the suburbs, in general, lack dependent hinterlands, either because they never had any or because such hinterlands have already been involved by other parts of the agglomeration. Nova Iguaçu, however, by reason of its special condition of suburb arising from a city, i. e. a servicing center, and because it is on the fringe of the urban area in direct contact with a zone that includes rural areas and suburban pioneer nuclei, has retained a dependent hinterland. It is through the influence of Nova Iguaçu that the influence of the metropolis is passed on to this zone.

            To sum up, within Greater Rio de Janeiro, Nova Iguaçu is a diversified suburb that has not yet been totally absorbed by the metropolis to the extent of losing its individuality.   Although it is a fraction of the continuous area of Greater Rio de Janeiro, Nova Iguaçu still retains a high degree of independence and individuality