Spatial configuration in urban agglomerations: effects of retailing attractiveness in Serra Gaúcha Region, Brazil

Abstract

This paper focuses on the urban agglomerations and their effects on the spatial structure of the individual cities. An urban agglomeration implies the existence of strong socio-spatial relationships between nearby cities and complementarity between activities (housing, employment, study, services, among others). The objective of this paper is to present a methodology for the analysis of the probable effects of attractiveness between agglomerated cities, in intra-urban and regional scales. The article specifically focuses on the housing-consumption relationship and takes three agglomerated cities in the region of Serra Gaúcha (Bento Gonçalves, Garibaldi and Carlos Barbosa) as an empirical study. The paper applies a quantitative approach based on urban configurational models. The three cities are represented as a spatial system enabling the analysis of two scenarios: individual cities and the unified system. The Polarity model is used as an indicator of the relative attractiveness, inferring a certain type of complementarity between urban space units. The methodology enabled the comparison between the scenarios, providing a first measure of the spatial hierarchy generated for the consumption among the cities. The conclusions seek to highlight the potentialities and limits of the presented methodology.

Keywords:
Urban agglomeration; Configurational models; Retail and services; Impacts