Advanced forms of urban sprawl in the northwest vector of São Paulo: the São Paulo-Campinas Axis

Abstract Globalization and productive restructuring shape new metropolitan territories that, in their sprawl, include fragmented historical times, global and local. More advanced shapes of urbanization undergoing a process of constitution, indefinite, overlapping, discontinuous, scattered or diffuse, present territorial boundaries that are clear but complex from the point of view of their spatial relations. This study analyzes, from 2000 onwards, new dynamics of urban sprawl, related to the advance of modern economy, that are changing the patterns of land use along the northwest vector of São Paulo, in the São Paulo-Campinas axis, structured by the Anhanguera/Bandeirantes highways and considered Brazil’s major economic vector. This process has strengthened an extended macro-territory that requires reflection on public policies with a new scope.