The new capital in motion: the reconfiguration of public spaces in Belo Horizonte (1897-1930)

Author(s)

Carlos Alberto Oliveira

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2012-08-16

Examining board members

Maria Stella Martins Bresciani; Myriam Bahia Lopes; Marisa Varanda Teixeira Carpintéro

• Advisor: Maria Stella Martins Bresciani

Abstract

This dissertation had the central objective of analysing the transformations of public spaces of Belo Horizonte between 1897 and 1930, considering the different strategies of management and intervention, which were part of the public policy of use and occupation of the city until the 1930s. Therefore, a conceptual delimitation was essential with regards to the notion of public and public space aiming to reflect critically on the planning and the progressive concept of the State and of the Builders Commission of the New Capital. Consequently, an analysis of the city's management was made considering the government's agenda toward urban spaces and the appropriation of plazas, as well as chronicles that describe these spaces point to provincialism and melancholy as characteristics of the city. An analysis of issues related to the notion of public, which was the basis of several decrees, interventions and popular movements; which differentiated certain public spaces from each other while being categorized as the same; and which issues this notion enticed. The demand in finding different subjects of the city, not only stating the existence of group stratification or the predominance of market forces in the organization of the spaces, motivated the search for a better understanding of the social and cultural experience in that context (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 10/04373-8 - The public squares and the sociability ideal in the new capital of Minas: organization and reorganization of public spaces in the first thirty years
• Grantee: Carlos Alberto Oliveira
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master