Terciarização contemporânea na Zona Portuária do Rio de Janeiro: entre a modernização e a inércia

Abstract

The thesis aims to appreciate the function of the Port Zone within the actual division of labor of Rio de Janeiro. The adopted approach seeks to relate the process of tertiarization and urbanization to perceive how the Port Zone has been redefined by the service sector. The choice of this spatial clipping in the current context of the Porto Maravilha project, i.e. in the period that begins after 2009, is justified by the advancement of the service economy over a space where inertia stood out as a spatial process. In this sense, the observed contemporary tertiarization reveals the coexistence of divisions of labor that create a truly complex reality. Advanced services located in the new corporative buildings near the seaside and Boulevard Olímpico, true representatives of the technical-scientific-informational period coexist in this same area of the city together with old services that are located inside the close neighborhoods, and it shows, in turn, traces of the past divisions of labor. Within what coexist in terms of labor also stand out the action of street vendors who use the renewed space of the Boulevard Olímpico for their action. Thus, it was possible to observe how tertiarization is reaffirmed as a defining process of the organization of carioca urban space. It is also evident that the Port Zone shows us how globalization acts on cities by creating complex places, where, as this specific case, advanced service firms, old services and street vendors coexist. Therefore, the Port Zone currently appears as a space situated between modernization and inertia.