Centros comerciais e shopping centers: transformações no espaço urbano de Uberlândia (MG)

Abstract

Malls, alongside with supermarkets and hypermarkets, form great commercial surfaces which represent important transformations to retailing throughout the history of commerce. They stand out in urban scenery due to their big spatial size and constitute complex business that group together commercial activities, public services and entertainment options focused on consumers. They represent commerce spatial concentration, which can also be understood as capital concentration, once malls reunite, at the same place, a great diversity of activities that ensure important finantial returns to entrepreneurs. Due to the concentration of activities from the third sector, malls perform an important influence in urban space because they are responsible for the development of new centers and changing surrounding areas. Malls are collective spaces, but not public, because they intensify existing socioeconomic inequalities, once not all cityzens are potential consumers. In Uberlandia, such as many other brazilian medium-sized towns, building malls contributes to transform urban space, for instance, by the valorization of surrounding areas, concentration of tertiary activities, changes on land use and public space interventions and also the development of new centers. Uberlandia stands out as Minas Gerais second city to host this kind of business. The fact is explained, mainly, by the existence of consumer market, once it is a relevant brazilian medium-sized town with high urbanisation levels and emphasis on the third sector. Nowadays, there are two malls working in the city, another one bankrupted and one in the initial building process. Altogether, the current work\'s purpose is to research the malls built in Uberlandia and their importance concerning urban space. This paper also presents a characterization of the most important business in the city, as well as old and new existing forms of commerce.