Social-Spatial Segregation in the Metropolitan Area of Campinas, Brazil: 1980-2000

José Marcos Cunha, Universidade Estadual de Campinas
Alberto A.E. Jakob, Universidade Estadual de Campinas
Maren Andrea Jimenez, University of Texas at Austin

In this paper we evaluate the changes in the pattern of social-spatial segregation in the metropolitan region of Campinas. Using census tract data from 1980, 1991, and 2000, we examine the socioeconomic changes not only in Campinas and its surrounding municipalities, but also in the urban sprawl of the area, which surpasses municipality boundaries and contains roughly 80 percent of the region’s population. The demographic and economic dynamism of the region over the past twenty years has brought two noticeable changes. First, the peripherialization of Campinas’ surrounding municipalities has increased over time. Second, the increasing spatial segregation between upper and lower classes resulted in the creation of a corridor of poverty and a corridor of wealth traversing municipal boundaries, with one of Campinas’ major highways as the border between them. As such, Campinas appears to have witnessed an increasing segregation of space, with the region’s major highways as the dividing lines.