Policies of Space and the Space of Politics:the “Negotiated Expansion" of the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Area

The aim of this article is to analyse the process of expansion of the Belo Horiz onte Metropolit an A rea, cre ated in 1973 wit h 14 municipalities, which today comprises 34 municipalities, making it the second largest MA in Brazil. After the redemocratization, more specifically after the promulgation of the State Const itut ions in the late 1980s, several new metropolitan areas were created in the country, and all nine MAs instituted in the early 1970s increased their number of member municipalities, in a context of low prioritization of the MAs by the federal government. The article highlights the factors of a legal, institutional, symbol ic and pol it ical/electoral nature that explain the expansion of the BHMA, also very present in other regions. It underscores the impact of the model of met ropol it an management adopted after t he 1989 State Constitution on the capacity to produce cooperative action in the metropolitan sphere. It also analyses the manner in which the dilemma of collective action for the management of t he MAs in the state of Minas Gerais was sought to be overcome, by means of adopting a new institutional model, in the mid-2000s