The group's activities encompass an effort to interpret the political phenomena and their repercussions on the territorial, regional, and local levels - not only based on political theory but also from the legal-political and constitutional organization of our State itself, consequently reinforcing the commitment of the research to the development of empirically oriented studies.
The group's studies and concerns work towards contemporary questions involving the physical structure of the land, whether urban or rural, and also the investigation of socio-political and economic aspects. Among the interpretative parameters to be used by the research group, emphasis is placed on concerns related to the singularities of federalist models, as well as decisions regarding planning and public policies, considering the implications for regional and local dilemmas.
More specifically, but not exhaustively, some of the issues that have already been a concern for part of the researchers gathered around the current laboratory include investigating the influence exerted by the real estate industry on areas/fishing communities in coastal municipalities; urban problems related to mobility issues, such as examining the rational circulation conditions of inter-municipal bus lines, and investigating the state capacities demonstrated by subnational federative entities in facing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond studies concerning the urban dimension, it is important to also consider the rural repercussions. In this sense, it should be noted that the country shaped its rural dimension from a, at least, problematic colonization strategy, a sort of colonial matrix was installed, enabling the embedding of solid large estates across its immense territory.
This colonial condition served to expand land accumulation and to fuel what is now called agricultural business in a somewhat aggressive and predatory manner, not only from the perspective of minimal environmental preservation but also from the glaringly inadequate state assistance.
Within this perspective, it should also be considered we have not even, under a capitalist imperative - perhaps because we have never truly exercised this mode of production and life -, implemented an effective Agrarian Reform, a political initiative that has been implemented, within several nuances, in central countries (also in Japan) and it's nowadays recognized as democratic. The kind of politics that inspired other Western states, particularly peripheral ones.
Eventually, it is observed that the possibility of altering the political-institutional framework currently in place in the country lies with the National Congress, which, due to, let's say, subtleties of our political daily life, keeps working for the perpetuation of the status quo, fundamentally by defending specific interests from which the population as a whole is excluded.