Land plots in colonial urban parcelling and its impact on urban morphology: the case of Campinas, Brazil (1815-1859)

Abstract

In the Portuguese colonization of America, the founded villages followed the principle of occupation of the territory by the assignment of the lands of the rossios in parcels – called datas de terra – through the obligation to build. These assignments, together with the arruamento process, established the urban use of the soil, materializing plot and building, block and street, giving effectiveness to the urban plane. This paper seeks to understand the dynamics of occupation of the territory and formation of urban morphology based on Luso-Brazilian urban parcelling and arruação process from the case of the central nucleus of the city of Campinas, Brazil, in the period 1815-1859, incident with the records of distribution of the datas de terra by the municipal council. The written records were compiled, had their information extracted and crossed in the form of graphs in order to allow the geolocation of the plots described verbatim, and, starting from the non-graphic record to the graphic record, the elaboration of maps that they made it possible to identify the development of urban morphology in the central nucleus of Campinas, suggesting that the analysis of this type of non-graphic record may contribute to the field of study of urban morphology in portuguese-matrix cities and cities of the Brazilian colonial period.