Paradoxos em torno da educação urbana: relações entre cidadania e construção do espaço público na cidade de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

This thesis aims to discuss pedagogical character of spatial experiences in public spaces in the city of Belo Horizonte, based on the understanding that these collective practices reconfigure not only public spaces, but also the subjectivities involved in these actions. To analyze the link between education and the city implies considering the paradoxes surrounding this relationship: if, by one side, the urban experiences may consist in practices that defies and questions the technocratic conception of the city – aligned to pedagogical practices that seek to form critical subjectivities, capable of acting and modifying the contradictions of social context, exercising citizenship - on the other side, urban experiences can be practices molded by disciplinary regulations of ways of living the city – aligned with formation of uncritical and passive individuals, consistent with hegemonic western pedagogic model. Inspired by the pedagogic theory of Paulo Freire (1967), thesis may suggest that, while non-hegemonic practices, the actions that may subverts imposed ways to live public spaces in the city are those that constitutes an “urban education”, which means a pedagogy that disputes the privilege relationships, acting conforming autonomous subjects and more democratic public spaces. Under this perspective, two urban realities in the city of Belo Horizonte are analyzed. The first one, a leisure planned space implemented between a medium, a high-income neighborhood and a village and slum areas (Santa Lúcia Dam Park, popular name, by which the space is Known); and the second one, the social praxis of a street and slum Carnival parade called Seu Vizinho (your Neighbor), including the (flexible) spaces molded by the actions of this group. The analysis presents compiled data of ethnographic experience and the author’s own living experience on both highlighted realities.