If this street were mine, I’d get it paved: social conflicts regarding the organization of urban space and the struggle for meaning between discourses and [r]existence

Abstract This paper analyzed the urban intervention of requalification in Porto Cais Mauá, located in one of Brazil’s greatest metropolis, Porto Alegre, in order to verify how social conflicts are described according to a discursive practice of social character in the organization of Cais Mauá’s urban space. Our approach was qualitative in nature and poststructuralist in scope, and it was based on the perspective of Laclau and Mouffe’s Theory of Discourse. A research archive containing 147 items was produced, among them: reports, interviews, images and documents that were analyzed in order to reveal discourses with help of Foucauldian discourse analysis. The NVivo qualitative analysis software was used to decode the information and organize the file data. The results indicate that the conflicts point to four discursive formations: on the one hand, two formations favorable to requalification, anchored in the conception of modernization and development of the city; on the other, a position opposed to it, with two discursive formations, based on the conviction that the way in which the project is being proposed does not meet social needs. Chains of equivalence and differences show disputes of Cais Mauá meanings according to their peculiarities, nevertheless, they share some commonalities: a multifaceted concept of city. On the one hand, a concept based on megastructures, great ventures and economic value, and on the other hand, a model based on participation, transparency, conviviality and preservation through social actions in the form of resistance. The perspectives discussed provide new guidelines for the debate on city organization under discursive, critical and symbolic contexts.