Boom Towns Of The Amazon Essay, Research Paper

Urban Geography

Boom Towns of the Amazon

The Amazon Basin has been called the last frontier. Although there has been a considerable amount of government investments in rural development, the majority of Amozonia is urban. Charles Wageley said that the Typical Amozonian town was lethargic and backwards due to its seclusion. Every year many people are killed in land disputes in this area. With all the social and environmental changes rapid urbanization in the Amazon has been overlooked.

As I mentioned earlier, the Amazon basin is considered the last frontier, but there are dramatic environmental changes occurring. The most notable change is the rapid clearing of the largest tropical rainforest in the world, which has over shadowed the genesis of new urban centers. The prototypical urban community in contemporary Amozonia is a bustling boomtown, a dynamic and sometimes short-lived frontier settlement. The change of the region s landscape occurs in the social area of conflicts involving Indians, agricultural colonists and activists clergy, cattle ranchers miners, timber interest, governmental agents and others. These conflicts are dangerous and sometimes deadly.

The North region of Brazil encompasses the states and territories of Para, Ampa, Amazonas, Roraima, Acre and Rondonia. This section of Brazil has had the highest rate of urbanization than the rest of the country in recent years. This article examines the nature, causes and durability of frontier urbanization in the Brazilian Amazon. The rate of urbanization has been low in Amozonia. There is a mercantile dependence on extractive boom and bust cycles, which has created a scattered population of river settlements. Two cities, Belem and Manuas, which are the historical commercial centers that are located on the main watercourses, dominate this region. Instead of the classical model of a regular hierarchy of settlements, a dendritic central place system developed in the Amazon, this resulted in a dependence on external forces. The transportation system is also expanding which allows links directly to the Brazilian population center.

In conclusion, the urban accumulation of a work force only partially converted to steady wage labor helps explain the rapid but uneven growth of Amazonian boomtowns. They provide the labor required for resource extraction but after that the migrants disperse. Classic frontier models, based on autonomous rural communities, do not predict the demographic influx associated with Amazonian conditions. Frontier expansions so far entail short-term appropriation of wealth, but not necessarily in the Amazon. The continued development of towns in this region is dependent on economic diversification aimed at providing a steady livelihood for the many migrants still entering the Amozonian frontier.