Urban Expansion and Socio-Spatial Segregation in a Medium City in Southern Brazil

Despite strategies to promote sustainable urban development and the best planning intention in the main cities, Brazil’s urbanisation has contributed to more socio and spatially segregated cities. In this way, the present study makes a social-special diagnostic of a medium city in the south of Brazil from the urbanisation process until it is led to a segregation, fragmentation, and dispersion city. Data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Google satellite images, and the City Hall of Santa Cruz do Sul were used along with semi-structured interviews with city agents. Our diagnostic shows that a network of agents is the component that interferes in the urbanisation process through beliefs, profits, fears, and relationships, contributing to a more segregated city throughout its urbanisation process.