Os ventos que movem as velas do mercado: intervenções urbanas em frentes de água no contexto da produção do espaço da cidade de Fortaleza - CE

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to analyze the urban interventions that act on the waterfronts and that restructure the surroundings of the port area of the city of Fortaleza from the production of the space. We assume as a temporal cut the beginning of the 21st century, and more specifically, the years 2000 to 2017. We start from the thesis that urban policies are directed to privileged spaces of the city, in this case, the waterfronts that correspond to the section of the avenue Beira Mar. In order to understand the phenomenal experience of the empirical cut, we are supported in the theoretical contributions fomented by the regressive-progressive method, which allowed us to understand the production of the urban space of the Fortaleza waterfronts contextualized to a totality. However, based on this method, it was possible to resort to historical processes to unravel the current dynamics, when, during the second half of the twentieth century, the coastal area becomes one of the most valued and disputed in the city, making public power different interventions that culminated in the incorporation and urban renewal. Today, the segment comprising the Praia de Iracema, Meireles and Mucuripe districts is marked by a close relationship between real estate and tourism dynamics, characterized by the high price of urban land, the concentration of residential condominiums and high-standard hotels and the best access conditions services and urban infrastructure. At the same time, Fortaleza maintains an important peculiarity in relation to the occupation of its waterfronts, since it is characterized by a city that is intensely fragmented, segregated, plundered and denounces through its urban fabric the inequalities of all orders. In the current context of entrepreneurship in urban governance and the consolidation of strategic planning, we understand that these urban interventions are a trigger for real estate development, in the same proportion that the State creates and modernizes new urban and tourist facilities, such as the Maritime Terminal of Passengers, the Ceará Aquarium and the Fish Market. These projects meet the ideas of "requalification" of central urban areas and water fronts that have already been realized in other cities around the world, such as those experienced in the experiences of American cities, the Iberian peninsula (Portugal and Spain) and the pioneering projects in Brazil. We highlight in our investigation the projects that are currently being implemented and implemented in the waterfronts and which point out a new urban proposal for the city of Fortaleza. We find through the research that investments in large projects are linked to urban renewal in the city of Fortaleza and are given in the production of an environment built for the interests of large private agents, which intensifies and sharpens socio-spatial disparities in the city. For the realization of a project such as Nova Beira, we identified some intentionalities related to the de-bureaucratization of the private sector's activities and changes in legal purposes in order to create new equipment or to modernize those already existing. New interventions are designed and implemented to foster the competitive insertion of the city into the global economy, generating new conflicts and forms of resistance.