Turismo e mercado imobiliário na Vila de Ponta Negra/Natal/RN: segregação residencial

Abstract

Vila de Ponta Negra is the original nucleus of the Ponta Negra district, located in the city of Natal/RN, and until the 1980s it was essentially made up of farmers and fishermen. From this period onwards, with the tourist refunctionalization of the district, Vila has been undergoing changes in terms of its use and occupation. There has been the emergence of new commercial facilities, services, and the search for housing by new residents with a higher income standard, making it an area coveted by the real estate market. The onset of a verticalization process in the border areas of Vila began in 2000 and was later followed by the spread of horizontal gated communities. Tourist urbanization (Mullins, 1991) has been intensifying, causing changes in Vila’s form and content (Santos, 2002). The objective of this work is to analyze the process of residential segregation resulting from the dynamism of the real estate market in Vila de Ponta Negra, following the expansion of tourist activity. The work is based on a theoreticalmethodological foundation guided by the Harvey-Lefebvrian perspective to discuss the social reality in Vila de Ponta Negra. The research is of a quantitative and qualitative nature and characterized in an exploratory-descriptive manner, mainly because it sought to provide a general overview of the segregation processes in the study area. After bibliographic and documentary research, a field survey was conducted, with on-site surveys of real estate investments and interviews with community, public sector and construction industry representatives, in addition to photographic records. It is concluded that residential segregation has become increasingly evident given that tourist urbanization has valued Vila and attracted the real estate market to build housing for a population with greater purchasing power. The selfsegregation evidenced by the gated communities (horizontal and vertical) was the typology that grew the most over the last few years. These housing modalities fostered the process of fragmentation of urban land through their walls, which hindered free circulation within Vila. Community life also fragments and frays as tourist urbanization advances in the main tourist district of Natal.