LARGO DA CARIOCA COMO UM CENÁRIO: DA REPRESENTAÇÃO DA PUBLICIDADE À PROJEÇÃO ESPACIAL DA INFORMALIDADE

Abstract

This article examines the association between the concept of public space and the idea of the scenario, taking the Largo da Carioca as a case study. From such association, we want to analyze the balance between social actors and their spatialities, giving visibility to the relationship of the social and political sphere. In order to do so, we revisit the origins of the concept of public space in the work of H. Arendt and J. Habermas, which were applied in the context of Political Geography and Cultural Geography. The idea here is to demonstrate the limitations of public space’s classical framework, which frequently points out to a crisis of its institutions and values. While following this way, all of those representations and actors that do not take an explicit political position in public space are criticized, as they would reinforce the omission from state and the privatization process. Nevertheless, the representations in Largo da Carioca show a different picture: the successive investments from state to organize space, all the actions taken by social actors that the classical framework sees as apolitical and the resulting conflicts from the coexistence of these two logics, composing a different scenario.