Industrialização no Alto Paraopeba: a criação e instalação da Açominas na cidade de Ouro Branco-MG

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century, a process of industrialization took place in Brazil, leading to rapid growth of cities. Minas Gerais, a state that historically had mining as it’s main economic activity, now has industrial enterprises. During the 1970s, the Açominas steel plant was installed in the Alto Paraopeba region. This project included sumptuous state investments that included the construction of neighborhoods to initially house the plant's workforce in the long term for a population of 180 thousand inhabitants. For this purpose, the João Pinheiro Foundation created the Urban Development Plan-PDU, which divided the municipality into four functional areas: industrial, agricultural, urban and environmental preservation areas. The neighborhoods, houses, and other urban facilities were built and at the end of the 1980s Açominas was inaugurated and the new neighborhoods were occupied. The housing was assigned to the plant's employees based on income criteria. Furthermore, the PDU was unable to integrate the old city center into the new area. Therefore, this work discusses the production of urban space following the installation of Açominas in Ouro Branco and the relationships between the steel industry and the Alto Paraopeba region. The methodology used consists of the analysis of documents such as “Planning and Regional Development of Alto Paraopeba”, published works on the subject, in addition to bringing to the discussion authors who work on industry and urban areas. Although Açominas was implemented in a context of steel industry expansion, in the 1990s this activity entered into crisis, coupled with a new economic paradigm, flexible accumulation. All these restructurings meant that Ouro Branco did not grow as expected. In the second half of the 2000s, steel activity once again assumed a leading role in the economy, causing Ouro Branco and municipalities in Alto Paraopeba to inaugurate the Consortium for the Development of Alto Paraopeba, in an attempt at regional integration. Therefore, this research has an academic character, which contributes to the study of industrialization, the production of urban space and; social, since, upon its dissemination, the data and information obtained can be useful for promoting public policies and possible uses at a regional level.