“Urbanizing” the hinterland: agriculture-led urbanization in the Brazilian Midwest

In the past twenty years, some small- and mid-sized cities in interior states of Brazil grew at significantly higher rates than metropolitan areas in the coast, a process that was anchored by the expansion of export-oriented farming. At the same time, the national City Statute (2001) established the requirement that every town with more than 20,000 inhabitants must have a participatory master plan to guide its growth and transformation based on a broader urban reform agenda. My doctoral research is concerned with how this agriculture-led urbanization and the new planning paradigm are connected to—or at odds with—each other. I hope to make a positive contribution by broadening our understanding of urbanization in the global South, offering a counterpoint to our usual narratives focused on metropolitan urban experiences, and by examining the limits and potentialities of participatory planning tools at the interface of rural and urban dynamics.