THE RIGHT TO THE CITY FOUND ON THE STREET AND THE FORTIFIED ENCLAVES IN SÃO PAULO: THEREAPPROPRIATION OF URBAN SPACE BY PIXAÇÃO.
Peripheries. Pixação. Urban Segregation. Right to the City. Law found on the Street.
The democratization of public spaces for the effective guarantee of the right to the city requires greater tolerance and the dismantling of regulation systems that reproduce hierarchies, inequalities and prejudices rooted in day-to-day practices. However, this assumption goes against the new forms of segregation that has been taking place in contemporary cities. In turn, the constitution of urban peripheries, both as an urban space as a social process, suffered changes and underwent reframing since the 70s. Since the 90s, the urban social movements have been replaced by a new organization and peripheral cultural production. The new cultural and artistic movements emerge given voice to the paradoxes of a segregated city and a disjunctive democracy. As such, the visibility of peripheral cultural productions has been occupying new spaces in the city, transforming the quality of public spaces and directly interacting with the higher classes causing urban uneasiness. An uneasiness caused by the production of inequalities in the city, by living in a fragmented space. Is from the repetition of these acts that one can move from discomfort and tension to a more democratic society. Residents from urban peripheries express that their needs are not restricted to dwell the city, but also to built it, both its history, landscape, day to day life and politics. Furthermore, both strategies from the urban planners and from the public sector can be subverted by tactics — like pixação — and by everyday use that mainly the periphery and poorest populations can engender. One can understand that the right to the city is born on the street, from the informality and on the periphery, sustained by reasons capable of mobilizing the public debate and by civil society action, established by the struggle for recognition and inclusion. But while segregation rule the city, there will be resistances and counter-rationalities that deviate from this process in the non-institutional sphere.