Urbanização no Médio Amazonas: a importância de Itacoatiara/AM como cidade intermediária

Abstract

This assignment shows the role of Intermediate Cities in the regional urban sociospacial Amazon development. This was extracted from a reflection about Itacoatiara city, an amazon central meson-region of Amazonas State. The discussion about Intermediate Cities is not recent in Brazil; it remounts to 1970 s, when the demographic parameter was the only defining element of a medium size city during the first attempts of approaching Intermediate Cities. Nevertheless, recent studies offer new contents in theory and concepts in search of identifying the functional role of these cities in the urban network. Distance of metropolitan areas, historical records, favorable geographic location, political representation due to special development programs and structure to offer goods and services are some characteristics of a new definition of what an Intermediate City can be. The analysis about the importance of Itacoatiara city in its micro region, from the study of the historical formation process and systematization of secondary data, took into consideration these references to understand the role of Intermediate Cities in the regional space organization and permitted a reflection about their limits and potentials. It was concluded that Itacoatiara, is an Intermediate City that nurture smaller ones with information, technology, goods and services, and political presence since these smaller cities are not capable to realize all of these. This way, there is a link between smaller cities and the great urban centers, giving surety to production, circulation and consume of the capitalist accumulation process. Therefore, without this, it would have a gap among the various levels of cities and their respective roles in social and territorial work division.