Urban expansion in Brazilian urban legislation: a temporal review

Abstract

The urban perimeter aims to legally define what can or cannot be a city. Its expansion, which takes place through the transformation of rural land into urban land, can result in high land valuation, therefore being the target of intense disputes and conflicts, configuring, even if potentially, an increase in the urban area of a municipality. In order to understand the relationship between urban expansion and urban planning in Brazil, this article intends to discuss the legal apparatus constituted on the federal scale that influences urban expansion processes. The qualitative and descriptive method was based on the investigation and systematization of the federal urban normative mechanisms approved between 1938 and 2021 in the country. The discussion is structured around three axes of analysis: the reasons for the existence of urban planning as an instrument that engenders public policies; the approach given to urban expansion in different federal legislations between 1938 and 2021 and, the connection between the Master Plan (as an instrument of urban planning) and urban expansion. Finally,
the results found show that, based on the City Statute, there is an advance in the legal framework for urban expansion planning in the country, though only as principles and guidelines, and it falls on the municipality the responsibility to decide to do it in a urbanistically coherent manner or not.