Commuting in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba: a study of actions in the 1990s and impacts in the following decade

Abstract

The central interest of this article is the daily commuting, the actions of the state in the planning of urban and metropolitan mobility, and the competition of such actions to provide the population with the conditions to maintain or adapt their displacement patterns. The case study carried out seeks to determine the influence of planning and management actions in the metropolitan transport system implemented in the 1990s on the behavior of the population of selected municipalities in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba, subject to commuting to work. The research processed data on pendular displacements obtained from the 2000 and 2010 censuses, with details of flow volumes, their variations in the period and their spatial distribution, the average distances of the displacements and their variations in the period of analysis. The results were cross-referenced with works by other authors and approaches: demographic, economic, social, urban and metropolitan planning analyses, in the same spatial and temporal frames. The freedom to choose where to live and work would be essential for the population to ensure its ability to adapt and socially reproduce in the metropolitan territory, including the need to commute or not. However, reality imposes limits or even eliminates any possibility of making such choices, especially in the selection of the place of residence. The article reiterates the need for other and new territorial policies to reduce displacement distances and promote better standards of urban habitability.