The paradoxes between different urban spaces in the municipality of Barcarena, Pará state, Brazil

Abstract Over the past decades, the process of urbanization in the small towns of Amazonia has transformed the urban and rural sceneries, which were restructured and have lost their characteristics. Although there are cities deeply dependent on forest resources, there is the emergence of cities that have withdrawn this activity and become dependent on the productive sector connected with the global market, such as the industry. The municipality of Barcarena, Para state, is an example of this process. Even though its economy is based on industrial activity, its rural population overlaps its urban population. In this sense, this paper aims to study the urban restructuring of the municipality of Barcarena, from the installation of an industrial complex, and the urban paradoxes resulting from this process. This research was developed using data collected through questionnaires applied in urban households, census data, and information collected in the Barcarena City Hall. This study shows the incoherence of data on urbanity; questions IBGE delimitations; and concludes that Barcarena is a “town of the forest” because it has kept its culture and economy closely related to it, and that ‘Vila dos Cabanos’ is a “town in the forest” because it presents strong logistic functions bound to the exterior and disconnected from the forest.