Implosion and explosion in the Exopolis: evidences from the MRBH’s real estate market

Abstract:

Among the contemporary metropolis’ spatial phenomena, this work highlights the so-called “Implosion” and “Explosion”, derived from Henri Lefebvre’s work. The implosion is interpreted as a trend to agglomeration in the central areas of metropolis, which means a reoccupying of these areas as privileged spaces. The explosion informs a process of extended urbanization, which indicates the occupation of areas distant from the main centralities. These two trends are related to the called Exopolis, a metropolis interpretation provided by Edward Soja. In the empirical exercise to Belo Horizonte and its metropolitan region, housing market’s data were used, and the Fuzzy Clustering Analysis was employed. The results about the implosion hypothesis stresses the heterogeneity of the city’s central area, and to explosion, this market provided evidences that it is actually extending itself through the region, either in clusters of housing of workers in the urban fabric, whether in condos for elites.

Keywords:
urbanization; housing market; Belo Horizonte; methods of regional and urban analysis