Project Description

The present work aims to characterize the urban layout of the Ancient Centers of Brazilian cities, which influenced economic activities in designing their strokes and their urban forms.

For this study, we selected three cities in regions with different geographical features that have emerged or lived at the height of certain economic activities occurring in the so-called Brazilian economic cycles. Being the city of Ouro Preto, in the state of Minas Gerais, Amazonas in Manaus and Santos in São Paulo, related to the cycles of Gold, Rubber and Coffee, respectively.

There was evidences that some of these cities suffered interference on the occasion of its urban formations. The Village of Santos, founded in 1543, has spent 300 years in a slow growth process, to a virtual standstill, only in the mid-nineteenth century aroused with the arrival of the coffee economy.

Manaus, founded in 1669, thus more than a century after the city of Santos, also went through a long period of stagnation. In 1800, motivated by profits from the rubber economy, began a process of development.

Ouro Preto, founded in 1798, had its origin near the gold mines in Minas Gerais, therefore, has emerged as a result of economic activities from the gold cycle.

It is understood that the economic impact, which occurred in each of those cities, promoted rapid growth, demographics, expansion and urban infrastructure; as a result, there were major changes in the layout of the original nucleus of the villages, which developed slowly before the economic phenomenon, with the exception of the town of Ouro Preto, which emerged and grew with the gold economy.

Research Team

• António Carlos Rodrigues Silva
• Fernando Brandão Alves (supervisor)

Financial Support

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Stage of Progress

• Concluded in 2013