Preventing Rural Exodus through Development in the Pampas

Abstract

Rural Brazil has gone through a crisis in the past century. Modernization and technology shifts has left agriculture in few very mechanized hands and pushed the rural labor force into industrialized urban areas. This phenomenon is called the Rural Exodus.

The Pampas, the southernmost tip of Brazil, are symptomatic of the exodus. Establishment of free trade zones along the state's borders with Uruguay and Argentina has allowed new economic opportunities and influxes of investment in the area.

Opportunities to reverse emigration patterns have sprouted in small-scale projects pushed by strengthening interest in economic strategies of micro-credit and self-empowerment. These ideals can mold an architectural study of design strategies that empower the rural individual to develop from scratch a home, a business, and collectively, a community. Design through regional tectonic strategies for economic development is essential to the alleviation of the rural exodus in the Pampas.