Imaginários e dinâmicas socioterritoriais na produção do espaço da Ponte Estaiada Octávio Frias de Oliveira em São Paulo -SP

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand the production of space and the imaginary surrounding the Octávio Frias de Oliveira Cable-Stayed Bridge (São Paulo-SP/Brazil), in light of the socio-territorial dynamics and fragmentations that traverse it. The methodology adopts a qualitative approach, with bibliographic and documentary research, using newspapers, magazines, and other audiovisual media, along with field observation incorporating ethnographic elements. The theoretical framework draws on authors such as Henri Lefebvre (2000; 2009), David Harvey (1980; 2005; 2007; 2012), and Pierre Bourdieu (1989; 1997; 2002; 2011; 2023). The analytical path is structured around three interdependent axes. In the Political and Legal axis, the study begins with an analysis of the territorial configuration of the Morumbi neighborhood and the Real Parque favela, in order to understand the elements that enabled the commodification of the territory where the bridge was built. This process is framed within the Água Espraiada Urban Partnership Operations (OUCAE), made possible through the sale of Certificates of Additional Construction Potential (CEPACs), instruments that reveal the alliance between state and market in the financialization of urban land. In the Image and Tourism axis, the thesis explores the bridge’s transformation into a media icon, symbolic asset, and visual commodity appropriated by city marketing strategies, advertising campaigns, and real estate developments – including the monetization of the “bridge view” by luxury hotels. Drawing on the categories of uses and counter-uses (Leite, 2007), the study also analyzes insurgent appropriations that reconfigure spatial meanings and challenge hegemonic narratives. In the Life and Everyday axis, through “close-up and insider” observation (Magnani, 2002), the research investigates deviant flows of pedestrian and cyclist who daily risk themselves on a bridge designed for automobiles and visual spectacle. These crossings, though not anticipated by urban planning, reveal subaltern resistances and everyday practices of spatial reinvention. The thesis concludes that the cable-stayed bridge operates as both a material and symbolic device of spatial spectacularization, urban commodification, socio-territorial fragmentation, and reproduction of urban inequalities. It argues that urban objects such the bridge condense both material and imaginary disputes over urban space, and that understanding these disputes is crucial for envisioning alternative forms of space production. In this sense, the unplanned uses and everyday resistances analyzed here offer analytical potential for rethinking the city from the perspective of human scale and pedestrian mobility.