Urban renewal, consumption and leisure at the Mooca district

• Grant number: 16/11273-6
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): November 01, 2016
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Urban Sociology
• Principal researcher: Verônica Sales Pereira
• Grantee: Gabriel dos Ouros
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura, Artes e Comunicação (FAAC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Bauru. Bauru , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project looks at the ways that the press rebuilds the images of the Mooca district as a place for consumption and leisure. Moreover, it looks for the users, costumers and owners, and how they build/rebuild these spaces. The old district, marked by deindustrialization and strong loss of population since the second half of the 20th century, has been recently marked by a rental state boom. This process reproduced gated communities from condominiums, with many conflicts involving its heritage, as well as the renewal/ refurbishing and proliferation of new places for consumption and leisure, like bars, restaurants, sophisticated groceries, shops, etc.& We will initially focus on the forms by which those places went through and anesthetization process by their reform of the façades and indoors by their owners, and how the image of the district is reviewed by the media. Next we will study the relation among the middle classes, their values and lifestyles connected to the forms of leisure and consumption of the inhabitants of those gated residences (Caldeira, 1997) as well as from the outdoors inhabitants. It will include the rediscovery- return to the public space of the district, revitalized by its industrial heritage and Italian tradition, by their new images, the architectonic façades and newspapers, forming a new urban landscape. (AU)