The Right To The City And Production Space Between Discourses: The Fight For Signification Of Recovery Urban Environments

Abstract The aim of this study is analyse demands inherent to Pier Mauá’s urban space in Porto Alegre-RS through discursive structures, identifying elements and meanings that are present throughout urban space debates. For this, a research corpus was assembled containing 184 files, including: papers, interviews, images, videos, audios and documents that were analysed in order to better understand discourses from a social antagonism’s point of view. Under a post-structuralist perspective, Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory (TD) was used as it allows a socio-political analysis of society. Some auxiliary theories regarding the Right to the City from Henri Lefebvre was also considered as well as David Harvey’s Capitalist Production of Space. Following the tradition of TD studies, a retroductive methodology was performed. Our findings revealed a conflict between the hegemonic posture adopted by those who want to reshape Pier Mauá into a commercial and entrepreneurial area and those who, with a counter hegemonic posture, defend the maintenance and requalification of its area contemplating it as a public space ideal for leisure, culture and tourism. It was also possible to identify some equivalences considering Pier Mauá’s disputes around: the concept of City - on the one hand, related to mega structures, large enterprises and economic value towards progress and, on the other hand, participation, transparency, community and preservation through [r]existence strategies and other alternatives regarding the state of urban space being qualified for people and not for businesses.