O éthos urbanístico do Acaba Mundo: estabilização, manutenção e reprodução do modelo de canalizações de cursos d’água desde a construção de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

Belo Horizonte becomes the first experience of implementing a city model that, here, has the symbolic function of expressing the positivist liberal ideology of the then recent Brazilian republic: order and progress. The image of the new capital must connote modernity, technical and technological advances focused on health and hygiene and circulation (of products, people and waters). From this research, it is understood that the model implemented in Belo Horizonte has become hegemonic, being reproduced until today, constituting what is here called urbanistic ethos. It is understood that all technological development is a social construction and is consolidated through stabilization, maintenance and, consequently, its reproduction. In order to conceptualize the urbanistic ethos, the channeling process of the Acaba Mundo stream was taken as a case study, which has undergone interventions since the construction of Belo Horizonte, at the end of the 19th century. Its choice was based on the understanding that the actions taken over time in its channeling can be compared to the other water courses, representing a practice carried out until today, without a break with the dominant paradigm.