Quando o sambaqui vira shopping center: a produção social do espaço a partir da urbanização turística de Cabo Frio

Abstract

The studies about middle size cities show that the shopping center “phenomenon” plays an important role in the course of restructuring these urban centers, broadening the possibilities of capital accumulation starting with the capitalist agents taking action in areas distant from the urban centers. This scenery implies in the verification of the interference from economic agents that, by establishing a partnership with the public sector, they operate in the reconfiguration of middle size cities with the goal of looking on their own private interests through public policies that, by giving in on the capitalistic demands, they generate a turbulent process as they allow the worsening of the social problems. The main objective of the present thesis is to analyze in what way the process of urbanization of the town of Cabo Frio, specially linked to a set of actions that stimulated tourism, reproduces the logic of urban entrepreneurship and the logic of urban strategic planning, understood here as models of space production, inherent to the mode of capital accumulation. For this, the study analyzes the construction of “Shopping Park Lagos” in Cabo Frio. The mall`s location was a target for contradictions and conflicts because it is in an area near elements of environmental and historical concern for the city. The methodological procedures counted with the survey of documents related to the policies, projects, plans, legislation and interventions, besides the quantitative inquiry about the origin of consumers to measure the area of influence of this enterprise in the internal dynamics of Cabo Frio and the region. We notice that the process in which ended with the setup of the mall fulfills certain aspects of the urban strategic planning, because it navigates inside the scope of privatization of public spaces and which is combined with the touristic urbanization, for the presence of this element in the context of the region that Cabo Frio is in provides it with more centrality and, consequently, more capital attractiveness in the context of requalification of cities.