Urban sprawl and mobility in the metropolitan region of Natal: population dynamics and life space expansion

Although the concentric and dispersed models of urbanization still coexist in urban space, we consider that this phenomenon reflects more the crystallization and materiality of the former processes than its perpetuation in urban dynamics nowadays. The hypothesis pursued is that of a new pattern of dispersed and fragmented urbanization that has made urban frames more socially heterogeneous, and that this characteristic poses new challenges to both the social sphere and the individual scale. Thus we present the process of urban expansion in the Metropolitan Region of Natal (MRN), from a spatial and demographic approach, towards the south axis of urban development. In this sense, observing the changes occurred throughout the 2000s, allows us to understand the dimension of this phenomenon and of the urban sprawl process in the study region, and further analyze their impact. The results confirm the expansion of life space associated with a trend to urban sprawl in the south axis of the MRN, therefore indicating that such processes can also occur in other metropolitan areas of northeastern Brazil.