█████████████████████ PUBLIC LIFE IN THE IN-BETWEEN CITY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE School of Architecture and Town Planning. Technion IIT, Haifa, Israel, 6-10 June 2010

■ FINAL PAPER ██████████ PAPER: ‘IN-BETWEEN CITIES: NOTES ON PUBLIC DOMAIN, SOCIAL TISSUES AND URBAN FORMS’

Themes: Types of in-between cities and inherent public life

Appearance, event and performance of public-life in the in-between city Embodied experience of public life in the in-between city

AUTHOR: Manoel Rodrigues Alves

University of São Paulo School of Engineering of São Carlos

Department of Architecture and Urban Planning (Address): Avenida Trabalhador São-carlense, 400 – CEP 13560-970

Caixa Postal 359 – São Carlos / SP - BRASIL (Phones): (55-16) 33739294

(Fax): (55-16) 33739310 (E-mail): mra@sc.usp.br

In-Between Cities: notes on public domain, social tissues and urban forms Manoel Rodrigues Alves

Abstract

Contemporary urban tissues and situations are (still) mainly culturally determined, but the

city, in its new forms of enunciation, demands an investigation of the spatiality of the public

scope. In globalized scenarios of an increasingly privatized urban space, the contemporary

culture is influenced by consumption and its practices related to mediation of capital

circulation. In this context, exploring issues related to urban public realm and to ‘new’

urban public spatialities, we argue that some urban in-between cities establish a particular

urban morphology pattern, not necessarily an adequate one. Observing that contemporary

urban territorialities bring new interpretations to the concept of urban morphology, this

work investigates two contrasting enclaves of urban ‘in-between’ cities in Brazil, both

representing “archipelagos of peripheries”: formal / informal new urbanities (uncontrolled

urban sprawling processes) and gated communities. Developing a relational matrix,

composed of social and geographical data from IBGE (the Brazilian Institute for

Geography and Statistics), the paper explores urban transformation aspects of São

Carlos, particularly in relation to public space, privatization of urban space and social-

spatial segregation processes.

Introduction

As urban spaces can no longer be classified as public or private, as publicized or

privatized, we place the hybridization processes as a matter to be thought, not only by

means of production, but in terms of its assimilation and continuous development,

approaching and debating contemporary transformation of the urban environment, spatial

and public spheres. Our shuffled, disparate and hybrid present reality transforms any act

over the contemporary city into an extensive series of successes and failures that

peacefully coexist along with conceptual and operational intentions to govern complexity.

Contemporary urban territorialities bring new interpretations to the concept of urban

morphology. The city and the urban space1, in its new forms of enunciation, demand an

investigation of the spatiality of the public scope. Conflict and consensus are two

fundamental configurations of the distinct conceptions of public space and public sphere.

They govern the classical elements of urban life grammar shuffled into the present

moment. Today the real and virtual dimensions are jumbled in such way that they produce

a mixed zone that jeopardizes the independent existence of any of these spheres.

Contemporary urban tissues and situations are (still) mainly culturally determined – in this

context, the contemporary thought is confronted with the totalizing tendency of the capital

upon the culture. However, in globalized scenarios of an increasingly privatized urban

space, the contemporary culture is influenced by consumption and its practices related to

a mediation of the capital circulation. Again, we point out the continuous hybridization

process that loosens the boundaries between legal and illegal, formal and informal,

modern and contemporary, citizens and foreigners, homeless and no-right population, to a

point where it is almost impossible to determine the dimensions of grey areas, to

distinguish subjects and stakeholders, nature and culture, centers and peripheries, media-

dimensions and autochthone cultures. In this context, which questions should be posed?

Besides, in a new socio-technical reality of a hybrid and multi-referential society, to what

extent do the so-called innovative landscapes of the global age appropriately respond to

new forms of enunciation of the spatiality of the contemporary urban space? To what

extent are new urban tissues of dispersed urban surroundings not submitted to a

1 For the distinction between city and urban, see Delgado, M., 2008, p. 10-14, 23-36.

homogeneous cultural and economic context that promotes the logic of social and spatial

segregation of private spaces in a fragmentary urban city? How may the meaning and

performance of publicness differ in different in-between cities patterns?

Whether taking the city as an artifact or within the living city and the engine of urban

experience, we believe that it is crucial to think of the present, its territorialization and

deterritorialization processes, the creation and removal of scenarios and stakeholders,

whether as extensions or in resistance to the classical concepts of urban space

structuring and configuration. Following this path, the idea is to lighten up emerging forms

of urbanity in their social and cultural dimensions, and their territorial, environmental, social

and public correlations.

Breaking boundaries, dealing with porosities, intermingling dimensions, through the notion

of urban in-between cities2, we aim to discuss redefinitions, permanencies or grouped

conceptual frameworks capable of rendering present urban phenomena problematic. The

discussion demands different reading keys, if not distinct cultural approaches. It is a matter

of questioning contemporary spatialities and territorialities, observing issues related to, for

instance, public space and public sphere, urban space and public spatiality, urban place

and culture image, urbanalization3 and city consumption.

It is within our ambition to uphold the development of innovative theoretical approaches on

the relationship between socio-cultural and urban-spatial dimensions. Thus, we advocate

the adoption of new methodological tools that are based on dynamic socio-spatial

diagnoses seeking identification, and the adoption of development of conceptual

frameworks that can contribute to the critical approach of the contemporary urban

environment. Therefore, aiming at a better understanding of contemporary urban

transformation processes, we employ as empirical object of analysis the city of São

Carlos, a progressive medium-sized (intermediate) Brazilian city, located in-between the

wealthiest Brazilian territory and characterized by strong technological development. The

paper introduces results of a research still in progress, in particular related to an analysis

of social and spatial components of urban in-between cities public landscape and a

specific methodology of analysis.

2 Urban in-between cities, or rmaybe more adequately, in-between urban spaces: intermediate urban areas, fragmentary urban structures that may produce a fragmented urban tissue, not necessarily in the periphery.

Fig. 1 - São Carlos, Urban Regions and Sectors: region 2, methodology example

Urban Contemporary Space- some remarks

Particular urban in-between cities tissues are increasingly promoting a different sense of

urbanity due to a strategy of control and reproduction of an already established

economical order. Some contemporary in-between cities environments, supposedly based

on local symbolic culture, find in the aesthetic and spectacle phenomenon a powerful

mechanism of symbolic control of production of its spatiality, materializing polarized in-

between cities that lose identity and meaning. An example is the so-called ‘gated

community’, new spatialities of global pre-determined imagery that transfer civil activities to

private spaces. On the other hand, we find distinct urban tissues, formal / informal, legal /

illegal urban sprawling processes, where the public realm does not result from the overlap

of social, cultural, economical and historical processes and times.

3 (Muñoz, F., 2008). See notes 17 and 18 for further information.

Fig. 2 - Gated Communities examples: São Carlos

The urban space of modern times has changed”, it has become another one, where “the

modern ideal of a public urban life””4 is no longer so present. This city and the new urban

spacialities result from and promote accumulation of another nature, in which the logic of

cultural and spatial production of the city is no longer heir of modern times- at least not in

an absolute way. As a rule, these spaces are sold as a global tendency to improve urban

space in a form of abstraction from the value and form of merchandise.

Therefore, the contemporary city requires a review of actions in its spatiality. This city is

subjected to significant social, cultural and technological changing processes, and

conditioned by a privativistic speech and the leveling message of the media. At the same

time the contemporary way of thinking is confronted with a totalizing trend of the capital

over the culture, and a growing aesthetic process in all spheres of life, it requires

acknowledgment of plural social practices. Contemporary urban territorialities challenge us

in the tensions among domains, legal issues, urban uses and practices, leading to new

interpretations in the relation among urban morphologies, social tissues, behaviors and

conceptual constructions beyond those models and concepts established by Architecture,

Urban Planning and Social Sciences. These questions call for a re-signification of

knowledge and actions in the territorial dimension, responding to new spatial demands.

The city that emerges from the contemporaneity comprises unique textualities and

morphologies, which operate in a differentiated socio-cultural context. Transformations that

took place in the urban territory stem from logic determined by a late capitalist system of

flexible accumulation, which is strongly associated to culture, economics and society.

4 (Caldeira, T., 2000, p. 302). Modern ideal understood here as open streets with free circulation, enabling impersonal, anonymous and random encounters of different individuals and social groups.

Thus, several areas of life and experience in society are intermediated by the logic of

consumption.

Fig. 3 – São Carlos Gated Communities and Universities Campi

Since the city space is a product and a reproducer of dynamics that rule its own time, the

contemporary city starts comprehending new spatialities and sociabilities linked to the

economic-productive system, from where new urban situations emerge, and where

previous socio-cultural and spatial relations have to be re-signified and reinterpreted. As

ramifications of new logic and dynamics in the contemporary city conformity, these

configurations and landscapes are based on elements that represent a urban space (re)

production dynamics. On one hand, this dynamics implements increased control and

vigilance and, on the other hand, it internalizes the collective life of public space.

São Carlos: a brief urban contextualization

The city of Sao Carlos was established in 1831, and started with the creation of a urban

nucleus near large coffee farms. The development of this urban nucleus was the common

interest of great politicians who were also farm owners. Therefore, the city grew in a

context of coffee economics until the first quarter of the 20th century. Similarly to other

cities that developed during the cycle of coffee economics, as of the 30s, in response to

the coffee crisis and the flow of immigrant workers who emigrated from plantations, São

Carlos started its industrial development, which will be consolidated in the mid 60s.

Sao Carlos is characterized as a city brought about by a dominant elite, and develops

based on the interests of this elite. The expansion of the city occurred from a pattern which

is commonly called central- periphery (Caldeira, 2000), with the concentration of the

middle and upper class in a well equipped center and the underprivileged in the peripheral

neighborhoods.5

Initially guided by the north-south axis, this expansion points to different ways in the

expansion of the urban stain of the city. The concentration, which was seen in the central

area until the 50s is altered in the following decades with a very fast and disordered

expansion process of the urban territory, with the implementation of peripheral and distant

lands divided into lots.6

Fig. 4 – Urban Sprawl: São Carlos expansion

5 According to Lima (2007), the expansion of the city can be divided into three periods: the first one since its foundation as a city (1857) to1929, marked by the first highway alignment (São Carlos Avenue, direction north-south) of the city and the beginning of street construction layout. Still at this time rural production such as coffee stands out and the railroad appears and attracts expansion and street prolonging. The second period (1930-1959) has certain consolidation of the industrial economy that eventually accelerated the expansion of the city, leading to notable population increase and creation of settlements for low –income population. The third period, from 1960 to 1977, is marked by uncontrolled expansion of the city towards the periphery, in a process guided by Real Estate speculation. As of the 80s, beyond Lima considerations, we can identify also a fourth period of urban expansion, of expansion of the urban stain beyond the highway and railway, characterized by settlements scattered in the city. 6 The most remarkable example of this process in the city is the case of the neighborhoods City Aracy and Antenor Garcia, settlements located in the extreme south of the city. Established without infrastructure and urban services and completely unarticulated from the urban tissue, they are located in areas with very unstable terrain, prone to erosion. With small pieces of land and accessible prices for the most needy people, the neighborhood consolidated as an icon of the underprivileged periphery of the city.

The location of Washington Luis highway has always been a limiting factor in the urban

expansion of Sâo Carlos, which basically occurs in the north and northwest axis and which

results from physical boundaries that do not favor territorial development in other areas.7

However, in this process, and differently from other moments, an important feature can be

noticed as of the 90s: The alteration of the urban tissue of a city mixed with another one,

based on socio-spatial segregation. What can be seen, in a more intense way this last

decade, is the alteration of the process of spatial conformation from the pattern center-

periphery to that pointed out by Prévôt Schapira (2000) of opposition to the idea of center-

periphery, in which an increasing polarization between the poor and the rich and a retreat

from the middle class are observed, in the mark of globalizing restructuring which takes

new urban boundaries to the extreme (Miño, 2004).

Fig. 5 – São Carlos 2009: urban and rural zones

7 According to the Director Plan, the Washington Luis highway is considered a physical barrier for the growth and access to Zones 2 – Occupation Conditioned and 3B – Recovery and Occupation Conditioned, the latter in an area of protection and recovery of superficial water captation of Monjolinho Stream. slopes, cliffs, soil with possibility for erosion and silted streams are characteristics of Zone 3A, south; zones 5A and 5B, zones of protection and recovery of water springs, presence of springs in the stream Gregório and the Area of environmental Protection of Corumbataí – This way, the city can only grow to the north and northwest .

São Carlos: gated communities and FILCS8

Sao Carlos has currently 30 real estate developments that can be considered consolidated

residential gated communities or about to be sold, but all have been approved by the

competent municipal bodies. These developments are concentrated in the north and

northwest axis of the city. On the other hand, FILCs are mostly located in the south and

southeast axis (as can be seen in Picture 6).

Fig.6 – Urban Location: Gated Communities and FILCs in São Carlos 2009

It is surely possible to state they are dispersed in the urban stain of the city, even though

they occur in significantly smaller number and dimensions. However, it is relevant to

observe they are constantly located near the city’s university campuses9. Just like

Iguatemi Shopping Mall, the university campus in Sao Carlos is located northwest of the

city and therefore, it has elements that attract the attention of developments, which favor

Real estate brokerage.

No other residential gated community is found south of the railway line, near the FILCS,

which are working class neighborhoods of São Carlos VIII and Cidade Aracy, as the figure

shows. The most underprivileged peripheral neighborhoods10 are located in this area, in

the extreme south of the city, as a result of the segregation process previously mentioned.

8 FILCS: formal / informal low cost settlements, official or not. In some cases, regular low income housing settlements (public fundings) or, due to collective idealized imaginary, low income gated communities (private developments). In other cases, illegal low income housing settlements in public or private areas. 9 The campuses I and II of University of São Paulo (USP) and Central Paulista University(UNICEP) to the northwest, the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) to the north and the Law School of São Carlos (FADISC) to the west.

Therefore, it is not a privileged area for these developments, regardless of

recommendations by the Director Plan or its natural conditions.

Another aspect to be observed is the urban landscape resulting from closing gated

communities with walls that are about 3 meters high. The extension of gated communities’

walls reaches about 51 kilometers, without considering the Dahma Park (dotted in figure

5). In other words, it is the equivalent to 510 urban blocks. This means that the territorial

demarcation in the process of socio-spatial segregation has its configuration as a physical

and symbolic barrier. It is represented11 by walls which limit the private gated community’s

area and which separate public domain areas as private. These include streets and leisure

areas, and as a result, define a distancing from the urban public space. These urban

enclaves, in fact, create undifferentiated tissues and urban spaces, which are simulacrums

of a city of claustrophily and control of pre-established activities. They offer little space for

random activities, for free will, for the impersonal anonymous encounter; therefore,

promoting an urban landscape very different from FILCs daily activities.

Fig. 7 – Gated Communities: walls

However, this incredible physical barrier of walls and monitoring of visitors serve as a

security argument and is regarded as an aspect of quality of urban life promoted by these

developments. Actually, what is being sold is a way of living added to a social status.

However, at least in São Carlos, this argument of security is not justified. The official data

on the tables that follow show that the violence rates have gone down, and do not justify

the argument. (Donoso, 2008)

10 More recently this process of peripherization of low income also occurs in the extreme east of the city. 11 Also made clear and reinforced in advertising pieces that describe an exclusive place, especially designed for few people, surrounded by walls that are 3 meters high.

Fig. 8 – Gated Communities: time line and security data, São Carlos

Generally speaking, gated communities in Sao Carlos can be divided into three groups.

First, developments of medium size consolidated in the city, which are located in areas

“inside” the city, and which were sold as pieces of land and not as houses.12 The second

12 In this group we have Sabará Park (1), Samambaia Residential (2), Faber Park I (3), the Convívio Residential Dom Bosco (4), Residential Parati (5), Ize Koizumi (6), Faber Park II (7) and the Bosque de São Carlos (8).

group is marked by large settlements13, larger pieces of land, whose target is the upper

class. It seems that these developments are located in the vectors of urban expansion and

have increasingly sophisticated leisure areas- such as the Eco-Sportive Park Dahma with

a Golf Course, Club House and an Equestrian center.

Fig. 9 – Dhama Eco-Park: general plan (including Techno Area, Equestrian Area, Golf

Club and the first two (of eleven) gated communities

In another group, there are gated communities with smaller pieces of land. Most of them

also have houses, leisure equipment and comfort ready for use, with more accessible

prices. Though not uniform, the target public of these developments is basically the middle

class, especially those looking for their first house. 14

Promotional leaflets of these developments include information such as location, prices

and special payment plans (when the target public is the low middle class). As a rule,

these gated communities have a small collective leisure area, with playground for children.

For sales purposes, the item of security is also pointed out. They are located, as a rule, in

the midst of consolidated neighborhoods with urban infrastructure and operate as small

closed villages within the city, implanted in small urban empty spaces in privileged areas.

The definition of these three groups while research was being conducted resulted not only

from spatial characteristics, but also from results in the socioeconomic analysis and data

13 In this group there are the Damhas (9), from the group Encalso, Eldorado (10) Swiss Park Residential (11) and the most recent Quebec (12), Montreal (13) and Espraiado Park (14). 14 The Director Plan of São Carlos considers areas with more than 500,00m2 urban emptiness areas. In this group there are the Condominium Park Fehr (15), Grand Ville (16), Nossa Senhora de Nazaret (17), Ipês Park (18), Green Village (19), Residential Condominium Villa de la Riviera (20), Santa Cruz (21), Village Mont Serrat (22), Village Paineras (23), Orizonti di San Carlo (24), Dona Eugênia (25) and Terra Nova São Carlos (26).

from IBGE. By crossing this data, it can be observed that spatial characteristics of location

and dimension of these developments and also the moment they were implemented have

direct relation with the social context each object is analyzed.

Gated communities and FILCS socio-urban indicators

Data from IBGE in the last census were used for this analysis. They were obtained through

the sectorial map of the city15 Data regarding gated communities and FILCs were crossed

with data from IBGE by sector in which the object of analysis was inserted to produce

socioeconomic information regarding income, instruction level and infrastructure of houses

and residents, among others.

Therefore, data produced is related to the gated community (or FILC) analyzed and the

urban area where it is inserted. For methodological purposes, these sectors were grouped

in areas in which there was a larger concentration of gated communities. This enabled first

the analysis of each development by sector and then the analysis of the general

characteristics of the area.

15 IBGE develops and updates maps of sectors for the census . These sectors are defined by IBGE according to the need to collect data of the urban perimeter, as a rule resulting from the process of expansion and alteration of the urban stain, and include regions of about 300 homes, with elements of organization to search and use data collected. In some developments of group 2, areas of the city that expanded after the 2001 Census, the analysis was not possible. In few specific situations of the other two groups, also due to implantation after the census, even though there was data regarding the sector, this analysis was partial. In the first case , these objects are considered by IBGE as located in rural areas, for they did not exist previously as part of the urban space and therefore there is no data available for the analysis of the region In the second case, analysis of the sector is possible , in an attempt to understand the region where the development is inserted, and the possible consequences of its implantation.

Fig. 10 - São Carlos, Urban Regions and Sectors: region 1, methodology example

Figure 10 explains the methodology used by area, in this case, area 1, its 5 sectors and

the existing gated communities. As previously mentioned, data from each sector was

analyzed, and then grouped by area, and finally, contextualized in the whole dimension of

the city.

Fig. 11 – Financial Income: urban sectors, region 1 and 4, methodology example

Fig. 12 – Schooling Indicators: Residential Faber Castell and Condominium Santa Cruz,

methodology example

The analysis of information based on socioeconomic data of the areas where the objects

of analysis are located shows that: There is a huge difference regarding income, level of

instruction and infrastructure between Group 1 developments , located in noble and

consolidated areas, and group 3, with smaller area and scattered throughout the city.

There is significant alteration in the urban landscape of groups 2 and 3; processes of

social segregation are present in the three groups, though they are stronger in groups 1

and 2.Thus, some of the data16 analyzed help understand the differences among the three

typologies of gated communities. Direct correlation between income and schooling is

observed, as well as income and housing standards, income and urban infrastructure.

Even though these results seem obvious, they are obvious just to some extent. The most

16 During research, iconography similar to that presented was designed , regarding three big categories: 1. Infrastructure (Number of de homes by sector; Average number of bathrooms per domicile; Percentage of domiciles by number of bathrooms; Percentage of domiciles with poor general water system ; Percentage of domiciles with poor trash collection by cleaning services; Percentage of homes with poor general network of sanitary sewage); 2. Schooling (average number of years studied by household ; Percentage of household by course attended); and 3. Income (Percentage of people responsible for monthly nominal income).

remarkable example is the Residential Faber-Castell, in the west area, with indicators of

always having good conditions. In contrast, even though it is physically very close,

Condominium Santa Cruz’s income and schooling indicators are very low. Urban

infrastructure services are also poor.

Fig. 13 – Urban Location: Residential Faber Castell and Condominium Santa Cruz

A similar example takes place in Sabará Park, in the east area of the city, which is the

oldest gated community of the city. Even though it is located in the midst of neighborhoods

with distinct incomes, it presents high indicators- similarly to another development in the

area, the Convívio Residential Dom Bosco.

There are also cases of small gated communities in group 3, whose dwellers present high

levels of income and schooling, such as Green Village. In São Carlos, these communities

are frequently located near one of the university campuses of the city. However, in

general, group 3 of smaller gated communities presents lower results in indicators

concerning income, schooling and infrastructure conditions as for example, in the north

area, the gated communities Condominiums Dona Eugênia and Ize Koizume, or in the

southeast area, the Condominiums Nossa Senhora de Nazaré, Village Paineiras and

Village Mont Serrat. In reality, these indicators are 20-25% higher when compared to some

particular FILCs.

Conclusions

Observations made in this paper show that residential gated communities are spaces that

seek to provide its residents with safety that is not always justified, controlled leisure and

better housing conditions. Moreover, analysis presented here shows the strength of

dissemination of residential gated communities’ typology and also how much they became

incorporated in the idealized imaginary of distinct social classes. This ideal represents the

search for a lifestyle. A life that is distant from reality, to be lived in urban enclaves

representing the fallacy of a public life, of global economic processes and privatization of

the urban space.

The contemporary city is continuously reproduced, as a general condition of the

appreciation process ruled by capitalism. These enclaves produce forms, relations and

social representations. New urban spatiality is sold as a global trend of space

improvement, and, in this scenario, there is an association of production structures of the

urban area and its spatiality in the production of pseudo public -spaces; actually, they are

simulacrums of urban life which re-signify the ideal of public space and subject the capital

social to private logic, especially linked to multiple consumption of the contemporary

society. Even though it is a fallacy, selling a differentiated lifestyle is what has more

intensely stimulated changes and expansion in the urban landscape. At the same time, it

disconfigures the city as the maximum example of public life.

These changes weaken the urban identity and put the dialectics urban tissue/social tissue

in second place. Having their own codes of ethics and functional behavior, they condition a

large set of activities, which are part of the urban tissue of the contemporary collective life

in the design of a city with dissociated urban fragments. They are “Consumption spaces”

resulting from urbanization processes determined by the logic of the tertiary, the so called

urban renovation: private in-between cities, an ever increasingly idealized imaginary of

distinct social classes.

This phenomenon is associated to what is defined by Muñoz as a process in which a new

logic in the construction of contemporary spatiality is seen. Market relations and place are

redefined to make up a culture based on thematic consumption of the city. Muñoz calls this

process urBANALization17, in which a logic of containerization is present to redefine

contemporary urban spatiality, making urban structures – such as residential gated

communities – and other typological traditional spaces , such as streets and squares,

objectualized in containers18, thematically reduced to a set of urban functions of a

controlled space: Vectors of the creation of private fortresses ruled by isolation and

claustrophilia, pseudo public spaces filled with visible and invisible signs of privatization,

simulacrums of the city.

The promise made by this kind of housing is made thematic by necessities that confirm the

contemporary trend to privatize the urban space. Therefore, they promote a reduction in

the fruition value of the public space, denoting an aspect of artificiality19.

Fig. 14 – Gated Communities and Morro da Macumba

Production, conformation and configuration of the urban space are determined by

questions of dominance- political, social or economic- or appropriation of daily practices,

identity relations and feelings of belonging, questions which are present in the urban

environment. Whatever the processes to define urban spaces, either residential gated

communities or FILCS are urban enclaves of ghettification that work as social and

17 (Muñoz, F., 2008), (Muñoz, F., in Sola-Morales, I., 2005). 18 Containers: real estate developments subject the social capital (cultural, leisure and commercial) to their needs of accumulation; physical structures representative of the contemporary mass culture which has consumption as central objective , whether consumer goods (supermarkets and shopping malls), cultural leisure (museums and sports centers), transportation (stations and airports) or services (hotels and groups of offices). Especially collective spaces of exclusion , simulacrums of the authentic city , which produce segregation through self-segregation. Simulacrum of public spaces where people can have all their basic and superfluous needs met , without really living together with components essential to urban life, such as the street or the square (Solà-Morales, I., 2002, p. 97-99)

territorial urban condensers. Especially in gated communities, interchange is produced in

societies that are increasingly ritualized. Real estate developments subject the social

capital to its needs of accumulation, aiming at consumption. They incorporate production

of excluding collective spaces, private and privatized20 - and, in this regard, promoting a

completely different urban landscape from FILC´s atmosphere.

The city of these urban enclaves called gated communities has increasingly been a

paradigm of urban quality generally speaking, in large and medium-sized cities, in the

interior of São Paulo and other states in Brazil. It is the paradigm of a city built by walled

ghettos, physically represented or not. Separated by walls, gates, wrought iron gates, they

show a clear tendency for socio spatial segregation, in which the urban space is not for all,

but only for a few. A private city is created within the public city. The counter face of the

emptying of public life, in which the distinction between public and private becomes more

diffuse, makes it difficult to contest the loss we suffer.

The public space, place for human accomplishments, social heterogeneity, the first socio

cultural experiences, subjective exchanges and the free expression is gradually

abandoned and, instead, is replaced with spaces without identity21.

Thus, the so called new urban spatialities are becoming mere simulacrums of places- at

least in the case of residential gated communities, but not only, once its collective

imaginary is also partially reproduced in private official FILCs -, reproducing a reality that

makes no sense and doesn’t even come close to the reality it simulates.

19 In fact, residential gated communities that imitate the notion of living with others in the city, which had previously been visible through the public dimension, making artificial settlements very different from, for instance, Morro da Macumba, an autonomous FILC in São Paulo (see illustration 14). 20 (Solà-Morales, I. 2002, p. 96). 21 According to Augé (1994), “if a place can be defined as identitary, relational and historical, a space that cannot be defined as identitary, or relational, or historical will define a non-place. (Augè, M. 1994, p. 73). To Augè, the place is necessarily historical , combining identity and relations, related to the experience and to human memory; whereas the non- place, as a rule, is projected for the circulation and/or rapid transportation, does not look like the associative public space, place of identify and relations where memory is accumulated. Even though the occurrence of a non-place in a place is possible – if we consider the subjective meaning of place (identitary, relational and symbolic) extreme objectivity of the non-places influences in the characterization of these spaces, reducing to the limit the symbolic relations among people and dislocating them from the specificity of the place. To Augè, an alteration in the boundaries between public and private occurs.

Spaces of expected practices, actions subordinated to conduct codes, vigilance and

artificiality. Hence, the simulation of places of urban life reaches several scales, changing

the relation of its inhabitants, who are then considered mere users, receptors of the city

spaces.

As a result, reality, the space experienced and built socially, the meaning of public space

(as mediator of the encounter and also of conflict), intensifying act of the individual sphere,

are all reduced to new spacialities, which independently of being exactly public or private

certainly promote different processes of urban privatization.

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Manoel Rodrigues Alves Short Biographical Statement

Manoel Rodrigues Alves, Architect: Undergraduate from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in 1980. Master of Sciences in Architecture Studies from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. Doctoral Degree in Architecture and Urban Planning from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of São Paulo in 2001. Pos-doctoral studies at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universidad de Sevilla (ETSA-US) in 2009. Professor of theory of Architecture and Urban Planning and Urban Design, Course of Architecture and Urban Planning, School of Engineering of São Carlos, University of São Paulo (EESC-USP). Visiting Professor, ETSA-US, 2009. Research Group, LEAUC (www.leauc.wordpress.com). Research focused on contemporary city, especially: public spaces, public places; public domain and public realm; new urban spatialities; and urban configuration processes; city, culture and urban landscape. Organizer and Chair SILACC 2007 ‘City and Culture: contemporary dimensions’, International Symposium, São Carlos, October 2007, and SILACC 2010 ‘City and Culture: New urban spatialities and territorialities’, São Carlos, August 2010. President of the Undergraduate Commission, EESC-USP.

Manoel Rodrigues Alves University of São Paulo Engineering School of São Carlos Department of Architecture and Urban Planning (Address): Avenida Trabalhador São-carlense, 400 – CEP 13560-970 Caixa Postal 359 – São Carlos / SP - BRASIL Phones: (55-16) 33739294 (Fax): (55-16) 33739310 (E-mail): mra@sc.usp.br