O centro e as novas centralidades: considerações a partir dos circuitos da economia urbana na cidade de Caicó/RN

Abstract

The course completion work refers to the urban space of the Caicó/RN, whose general objective was to interpret its spatial forms of commercialization and evidenced services from the theory of the urban economy circuits. After the urbanization process, with emphasis on urban expansion from 1970, the actions and objects inserted in the form of concentration in caicoense city are highlighted. The geographical space, understood as banal (a space of all the people and phenomena) and the various uses of the territory are elemental keys for that interpretation. From this concepts interrelation are evidenced and perceived the merger and centrality exercised within the Central neighborhood, especially the upper circuit agents, but also by the lower circuit. This subspace is characterized as the most dynamic and iluminated for commercial use. The hegemonic agents also act and characterize the central space as the high class. In return also were evidenced, from the urban expansion, the processes of peripherization and a attempt to a commercial decentralization spontaneously by the agents of the lower circuit in opaque sub-areas of the city. These peripheral agents of the lower circuit do not promote the same spatial distribution of trade, when compared to the process in the center. But that can not neglect the dynamics of the economy and the peripheral territory. Allied to this intense fragmentation of urban space caicoense was appointed to the co-existence also of socio-spatial segregation process. On the one hand, the hegemonic agents acts in concentrated subspaces (the illuminated) and promote its self-separation. On the other hand, the non-hegemonics survive from varied strategies in peripheral discontinuities (opaque subspaces) and are indicated as segregated of the city. There is, therefore, a profoundly unequal and fragmented city evidenced from the location of the urban economy circuits. It is understood that the city is not divided in two, but in various parts. Finally, the failure in the directing of the actions of the state (including the local government) is perceived. The law and the constitutional provisions that indicate that all men are entitled to use the city as a whole are questioned. The capitalist urban space of Caicó is a territory in which the hegemonic are concentrated in the form of urban centrality and the non-hegemonic agents are removed from the concentration towards the periphery. The market and the consumption planed in this globalized period, from the technical-scientific-informational milieu, shows that not all the plots and people have access to the entire city. The urban economy circuits and the concepts that are discussed in this research show such processes.