Morte e vida de um pequeno centro histórico: o processo de "revitalização" do bairro da Cidade Alta, Natal/RN

Abstract

Are the recent appropriations of public spaces characterized as an exercise of the Right to the City or a tendency towards the cultural turn? In Natal's historic center, the initiatives of appropriation of the users of Beco da Lama and its surroundings are confronted with domination strategies from the municipal management. As the main objective, we seek to understand the possibilities of such initiatives considering the conflict of interests between the different active agents, based on the study about the relationship between the appropriation of public spaces and the Right to the City. It was also outlined: to study the category of space in Lefebvre and its production; analyze the role of culture in the revitalization process of Cidade Alta; to identify the conflicts between the close order and the distant order in the Beco da Lama and its surroundings and to analyze the actions' orientation of the different groups towards the use value or the exchange value. Different groups, collectives, private associations and public authorities have been transforming the neighborhood through ephemeral and permanent interventions. Through the alliance between local entrepreneurs and municipal management, the already existing independent artistic and cultural manifestations underwent severe restrictions that compromised their maintenance. The narratives that present the center as a “dead” space reveal strategies referring to a tendency towards the process of transforming historic centers into centers of consumption through an urban identitary. On the other hand, there are still movements and collectives acting in the sense of carrying out exchanges based on the relationship between subjects and space, promoting identity through everyday practices. The urban space as the locus of dispute between the different - where the conflicts that appear in the form of the struggle for space are revealed - also reminds us of the idea of the Right to the City. Market culturalism allied to the city's sales strategies through image production configures what Otília Arantes refers to as a cultural turn. Through diversion, the appropriations that preceded the revitalization projects were able to reintroduce the meaning of public space as a locus of encounter and differences, a privileged place for everyday life and the possible, for exchanges that are also guided by use value.