Fronteira, corredores de exportação e rede urbana na Amazônia oriental brasileira

This article examines the important role of export corridors in the eastern Brazilian Amazon in influencing urban-regional changes and reconfigurations in the second half of the twentieth century. Employing the concept of the frontier, the present article documents that the corridors spatially and temporally integrated resources from the contemporary Amazon frontier with the growing global demand for mineral commodities that generated Brazilian trade surpluses. The article demonstrates that the recovery of the region's mineral resources required interconnections between mines, industrial districts, and ports through the logistics, routes, and infrastructure consolidated within the export corridors. Finally, the major urban changes that resulted from the export corridors, which were concentrated in their extremes, dialectically reinforced the previously existing urban centralities and disparities in those metropolises.