Parque para que povo?: um estudo sobre o direito à cidade nos usos e apropriações do Parque do Povo em Campina Grande - PB.

Abstract

With the crisis in the interior cities in the 1980s, there was an investment in cultural tourism in Brazil in order to recover the economy of the cities. This is how Parque do Povo was born, a public open space created to host the festival of the Maior São João do Mundo and attract investment and tourists. What is seen in this process is the increase of the privatization and commodification of a space that should belong to everyone, prioritized to the elites. Despite this, it is possible to perceive a daily appropriation of the park, which shows the importance of this place for the city, as a public space with a privileged location and historical value. Thus, this work aims to comprehend the appropriation and production of Parque do Povo and its relation with the right to the city, as a right of collective work. For this, a survey of the historical context of the creation of the Park and a field research were carried out in order to map the most frequent daily appropriations in the Park. It was noticed from the research a predominant use aimed at leisure, in which several activities take place simultaneously and another more formalized use, which is the agroecological fair that takes place weekly. The analyzes of the Park's space and its appropriations converge to the understanding that it is important that these appropriations are leveraged in order to guarantee that this public space reachs its social function and that the right to the city is put into effect.