A leitura do lugar como inserção e representação política na produção do espaço urbano

Abstract

Faced with the challenge of re-establishing the democracy, damaged in recent years in Brazil, and the historical inefficiency of the State in understanding the dynamics of territories, this work aims to explore possibilities of changing the processes of production of places in order to make them more democratic. It is assumed that this is only possible by incorporating into urban diagnoses, typical of public policy processes, the reading of the places by those who live in them. Based on the theoretical axes of (i) political, (ii) language, and (iii) place, an experiment on a reading of the place which considers the differences and the complexity of everyday life in cities, is proposed. For this purpose, the Plano Global Específico (PGE), a municipal public policy in Belo Horizonte, is critically analyzed as an urban diagnosis that unveils the logic of the current practice. Then, as a counterpoint to the tool used in the process of production of urban space, the Leitura do Lugar platform, developed by the PRAXIS-EA/UFMG group, is used. Such interface intends to publicize narratives of residents, supported by analysis approaches, allowing territories to be understood through the eyes of Others, so the encrypted language game is subverted.