MEETING SPACE, CONFLICT SPACE: REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE OCCUPATION OF BROOKLYN’S VIADUCT IN PORTO ALEGRE

Abstract

Urban diversity is suggestive of disagreements about how collective spaces should be used and also about its purposes. On this subject I propose a reflection on the cultural occupation of Brooklyn’s Viaduct in Porto Alegre, which has prompted a conflict situation involving multiple social actors, such as events’ frequenters, cultural producers and local residents. Here I reflect on these meeting’s unfoldings, basing myself on sociological and anthropological references about cities and conflict. In order to develop this ethnographic study interviews, audiovisual registers, research in image archives and journals, and observations of posts in social medias about the subjects have been developed. The Brooklyn occupation movement had an unsatisfactory outcome to the frequenters and to the users of the space, but that case might be illustrative of the ways in which the uses of public spaces in the city have been administrated by and negotiated with groups and autonomous collectives.