Role of sub-regional poles in the process of capitalist accumulation from the spatial division and urban hierarchy in Rio Grande do Norte

Abstract

The centrality of cities in capitalist society is undeniable. The city is the privileged locus in which productive forces manifest themselves in the most vigorous way in capitalism. The article aims to understand the role played by the poles (cities), especially the sub-regional ones, in the process of capitalist accumulation. For this, a bibliographical research was carried out and the study on the Regions of Influence of Cities (REGIC) was adopted, taking as reference the spatial division and the urban hierarchy in Rio Grande do Norte (RN). The results indicate that the flowering of polarizing cities in the interior of the RN was almost always due to the commercial expansion that ensured the differentiation of some cities and from this point reaffirmed the command of the process of accumulation of market base, whose predominance ended up shaping the current intra-regional productive structure. It is concluded that the most prominent positions that the sub-regional centers reached in the urban network resulted from the role of locus facilitator of the capitalist accumulation process, initially in the mercantile sector, after them as poles of acceleration of the rotation of capital and by the ability to attract some public and private investments.