Natal entre planos: uma história urbana dos primeiros planos diretores da cidade de Natal/RN (1967-1985) e seus desdobramentos contemporâneos

Abstract

This research is part of the context of urban transformations in the city of Natal between the 1960s and 1980s, a period that we can call the new cycle of urbanization in Brazilian cities. The object of study is the city's urban issues and the socio-cultural conflicts of the time, considering as parameters of analysis and temporal milestones the studies for the Serete Plan in 1968 and the master plans of 1974 and 1984, which are placed here as a synthesis of more general issues. This work, in an effort related to urban history, then focuses on looking at the master plans as the representation of a context of urban conflicts beyond the law itself. Thus, the general aim of the research is to analyze urban issues during Natal's planning process between 1967 and 1985 and the contemporary developments with regard to urban form as an expression of the events of the time. To this end, the structure of the work will range from identifying the events that took place in the context of the city's planning, making it possible to understand the main urban issues raised during the process, to understanding urban form as an expression of the spatial-territorial dimension caused by these analyzed events. In order to do this, it was necessary to include as a theoretical review issues related to the production of Brazilian cities based on urban plans, focusing on the opening of a new cycle of urbanization from the 1960s onwards, which will gradually enter the local context of Natal, discussing issues related to progress and the need to institutionalize planning. Using the concept of events, we present a narrative of events between the Serete Plans (1968) and the Natal Master Plan of 1984, organized and told from timelines. The methodological procedures involved bibliographical research and an in-depth nominative and filtered search in the Hemeroteca digital as the main source for finding periodicals from the time, as well as interviews in order to also recover an oral history of the discussions on this plan. The last part of the paper brings a visual emphasis to the transformations of the city, in an attempt to relate it to historical discussions and to close an approach that proposes understanding the city as a historical-cultural-urban construct of issues and conflicts that are constructed, reconstructed, renewed and materialized in urban form.