Entre o espaço abstrato e o espaço diferencial: ocupações urbanas em Belo Horizonte

Abstract

This article explores urban occupations in Belo Horizonte departing from Henri Lefebvre’s formulations on the production of space and everyday life. As we reflect on the experiences of these occupations, we seek to emphasize their relational and processual dimensions, paying attention to their materiality and their lived everyday. In order to understand the extent to which occupations can engender spatial differentiations, we circumscribe their historical background in Belo Horizonte according to their dynamics and tensions, attentive to the specificities of their production of space. We also discuss the contradictions between the private and the commons in regards to the landed property, highlighting the ways in which abstract space is reaffirmed in occupations. We seek to accentuate urban occupations as tensioned between abstract and differential spaces, as an intermediate spatial practice between domination and appropriation: a contradictory political space, which updates the debate on the production of urban space in contemporary Brazil.