Urban areas-a common experience: peripheral neighbourhoods and neighbourhood association's action in Campina Grande

ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: The quarters in the periphery of the Brazilian cities represent a formation relatively homogeneous, especially the quarters of less evolved cities. The quarters in the periphery generally are situated in hilly localities; in the principal streets and avenues are found the best residences and business houses (stores). The structural services are very deficient in this quarters. The maintenance generally is bad and there aren't big stores. The commerce is replaced by little shops and similars. These little stores normally sell unique pieces and the people buy all days bread and milk, furthermore other basic products of nutrition. In the quarters of the periphery normally are living families with small wage, in their little space of living they have a way of life similar and they find themselves in front of calamities similars with a restrict family budget and un unsatisfactory situation of the quarter. The poverty, the illitralism, the undernourishment, the unemployment, low wages and the very bad residence conditions, which characterise the community living in the periphery quarters, represent at least the conditions of life of this population. The social conditions of the inhabitants of these periphery quarters and also the bad infrastructure of these quarters had been and are the motivation to organise the population in Associations of the Quarter. As a principal purpose these associations will improve the conditions of life and habitation of the population of these quarters. This paper is trying to analyse the mutual characteristics of the periphery quarter inhabitants of Brazilian cities. This way the paper will study the organization of the inhabitants by means of the Associations of the Quarter, which are created as a response of the fight of the population with low wage. Reprinted by permission of the Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios Regionales