Júlio Celso Borello Vargas

This article proposes a study on the effects of recent changes in the capitalist production system upon cities morphology, especially in emerging or peripheral countries and more specifically, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Assuming significant changes took place in the logics of space production, made hegemonic in the last decade of the XX century and widely associated to what will be called here the “advanced capitalism”, a first attempt is made to understand, systematically, the impact of macro-economic rearrangement on the local urban form.

Healthy urban mobility is the concept that deals with how the physical structure of cities affect the mobility of the population and how it relates to collective health and well-being. The article seeks to share the experience of conducting a research on healthy urban mobility in the Cruzeiro Region in Porto Alegre (RS-Brazil) and the experiences and reflections raised during the survey. In order to make viable the large-scale survey in the territory, it became necessary the researchers' partnership with the local population, a relationship that caused tensions and adaptations. The text provides an analytical description of the survey steps, using the field diary and the research report as sources of information. As a result, the importance of community participation in association with academic research in the search for social transformations is highlighted, even though symbolic barriers must be overcomed. We hope, with this report, to share the lessons learned, which show mobility limitations faced by low-income residents and the challenge of transposing social and spatial segregation in large urban centers.