Belén y su centralidad en la Amazonia brasileña oriente

In the literature, there is an extensive discussion on cities demetropolitanization or metropolization and their role across their area of influence. This study discusses these issues taking as a subject the Metropolitan Region of Belem (rmb), capital of Para State, Brazilian Amazon. It recovers the history of the territorial development of Belem over almost 400 years, and using economic data and official former studies on Brazilian urban network, this paper seeks to demonstrate the coexistence of two dynamics in rmb. One associated to its role as the prime city within the Amazon network until the mid-twentieth century, and another that reveals the incorporation of the region to the industrial capitalist dynamics of Brazil after the 1950s. We may say that despite of the ratio decreased in the State’ gdp, rmb’s metropolitan expansion and services specialization shows that it has actually assumed new functions and maintains the characteristics of a regional metropolis.