Development Regimes, State Spaces and Complexity. What Changes in the Production of Urban and Regional Space in Brazil? Summary

This paper is focussed on the trajectory of productive and state spatial restructuring in Brazil since the 1950s. The Brazilian experience has important specificities as compared to the restructuring of Atlantic Fordism, commonly described in terms of a shift of spatial Keynesianism towards a rescaled and competitive state spatial regime. We will argue that, despite of the changes that have occurred in its developmental regime over time, there are important continuities in the production of urban and regional space in Brazil. The national developmental regime, which prevailed until the mid 1980s, has always privileged some spaces as opposed to others, while neglecting the dimensions of social-spatial and environmental sustainability. Moreover, the recent rolling out towards a renewed developmental state, after a destructive round of neo-liberalization of state spaces in the 1990s, can be interpreted as a crisis driven response, which has not structurally altered the production of urban and regional space in Brazil