This article is an adaptation of an excerpt from a Ph.D. thesis called Fragmentos Urbanos: Segregação socioespacial em Uberlândia-MG, also published as a book with the title Retrourbanism – New Urbanization Models of the 21st Century in a Global South Context.

The urbanization process observed in Brazil today comes from an attempt to change established by the 1988 Constitution, through a chapter dedicated to Urban Policy. Several attempts came to regulate this chapter, which only happened with the City Statute (Brazilian federal law), Law 10,257, of July 10, 2001.

In the context observed in the 1980s, economic globalization intensified, since the bipolarizing effect of the world is undone and neoliberal policies are established. One of its main characteristics is the global economy, which according to Castells (1999), was only possible due to the new infrastructure provided by information and communication technologies.