The research is a comparative study of the economic development, planning processes and the resulting urban morphology of four different cities: São Paulo, Jakarta, Hanoi and Belo Horizonte, aiming to disclosure the spatial outcomes of peripheral development. The cities are initially presented and compared two by two in each spatial scale, according to their resemblances in size and position, regarding economic dynamics.
The proposed study intends to investigate deeper São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Jakarta and Hanoi’s patterns of urban form, expose some of their tissues and typologies, reaching a better understanding of how these cities have historically coped with economic processes and how do they work today, opening the possibility of a broader discussion consisted on how do these four cities might learn from the experiences observed in the others and how do these lessons could be beneficial to other cities in general.