The Trinational Urban Archipelago of the Pantanal: Centralities Between Points and Flows

Abstract

This article investigates the role of cities distributed throughout the trinational Pantanal region (Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay), analyzing how these localities interface with the Pantanal’s natural and geoeconomic domains. Urban-regional analysis reveals that, despite their modest demographic profiles, these cities act as local centralities, influencing the management of the natural domain and serving as essential links within economic networks that traverse and exploit the Pantanal. They support economic and logistical bases connected to road systems that facilitate both the exploitation of natural resources and the transfer of goods to other regions of the Southern Cone. Although these cities exhibit development in various economic sectors, they form an urban archipelago: they do not constitute a strongly integrated and endogenous urban network, but rather assimilate and reproduce economic flows that impact the sustainability of the natural domain and its integration with other regional economies.