The Popular in the Downtown: Investigation of Peatonal San Martin in the center of Ciudad de Santa Fé de La Vera Cruz, Santa Fé/Argentina

• Grant number: 24/05448-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Manoel Antonio Lopes Rodrigues Alves
• Grantee: Bárbara Pozza Scudeller
• Supervisor: Julio Arroyo
• Host Institution: Instituto de Arquitetura e Urbanismo de São Carlos (IAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL), Argentina
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/04317-8 - The popular in the downtown: the repercussions of new intervention projects in the downtown of Presidente Prudente/SP and São Carlos/SP from the 2010s, BP.DR

Abstract

This research focuses on urban intervention projects in public spaces in downtown areas of (inter)medium-sized cities. We understand that these cities play a role as intermediaries between small cities, rural areas, and metropolitan regions. Therefore, they exert a regional centrality within the interurban network. Unlike what is observed in large centers, intervention projects in these already deteriorated downtown areas do not lead to a process of expulsion of popular segments. On the contrary, they seek to reinforce the popular character of the downtown. Thus, the doctoral hypothesis of the research in the country and also of this proposed research internship abroad is based on a particular research problem related to the process of peripheral urbanization to large metropolitan centers - hegemonic empirical objects in the understanding of revitalization projects in downtown areas. Bringing a necessary specificity to the understanding of downtown transformation processes, we will work with the city of Santa Fé, Argentina. Similar to the empirical objects in Brazil, this city has a large pedestrian axis on the main commercial street of the city, San Martin Street. Similar to the doctoral research in Brazil, we will use the case study method for data collection and analysis of Peatonal San Martin. We hope that the approach to this empirical object outside the country where the doctoral research is conducted will help contextualize Brazilian case studies in the context of urban production in Latin America, justifying the relevance of this internationalization to the thesis.