Cuiabá das crianças? : representações sociais de urbanistas sobre a criança no espaço urbano

Abstract

This study, developed from the debates carried out by the Research Group on Childhood Psychology (GPPIN), aimed to contribute to reflections on the relationship between children and the city in the psychosocial perspective, considering the social representations of urbanist architects who work in Cuiabá- MT. They adopted, in the theoretical discussion, the assumptions of Social Representations Theory (MOSCOVICI, 2003, 2012, 2013; JODELET, 2001; MARKOVÁ, 2016; ARRUDA, 2002; JOVCHELOVITCH, 2008, 2011; DUVEEN, 2003) in conjunction with cognitive polyphasia (JOVCHELOVITCH, 2008) and the representational project (BAUER AND GASKELL, 1999, 2008; MARKOVÁ, 2016, 2017) in interface with socio-spatial representations (JODELET, 1982, 2001; DE ALBA, 2011) and with the contributions of the Historical-Cultural Theory (VIGOTSKI, 2010; PRESTES 2010). References cited to the debate on children's participation in the city space (TONUCCI, 2005, 2014, 2016) and on Childhood Geography (LOPES, 2017, 2019) were articulated, highlighting the recognition of the contribution of children, spatially located in a time and place. The notions about place and its production of affections (TUAN, 1980, 1983) allowed reflections on the person's relationship with the public space. The conceptions of urban space and the sensitivity of the body in these spaces (SENNETT, 2014) dialogued with the construction of a city that should be thought from its collective (HARVEY, 2012). The methodological design consisted of 1. document analysis of the Master Plan for the city of Cuiabá-MT, based on a comprehensive perspective and 2. analysis of online interviews (MENDES, 2009) with urbanists architects, based on the assumptions of the Meaning Core (AGUIAR; OZELLA, 2006). The data announces the representations of the city of Cuiabá-MT from two meaning cores: 1. The child as another and 2. I-child, which are constituted through two focalizations belonging to networks of antagonistic meanings. In the first nucleus, the urban planners analyzed the child's relationship with the city, guided by a technical analysis, announcing the meaning of the city "path", city "pastiche", "urban western" and city of "damn the rest" whose main protagonist is the capital objectified in the image of cars. The child was perceived as a passive consumer of the city, pre-citizen, whose social role was reduced to the representation of student and member of the welfare society, subject to care and protection. The child was represented in a stereotyped way and the spaces of the city were thought for a childhood that occupies sectored places (playgrounds and school), marked by primary colors, as well as the documentary analysis of the city's Master Plan. The second nucleus was presented as a reflective process, the urban planners announced the possible city from the perspective of children anchored in the principles of spatial lovingness for which the city has the potential of belonging and identification, a citizen city in which children circulate in places and transform them into opportunities for learning and development. The analysis of both focalizations allowed us to identify the polyphasic thinking outlined by the technical and critical discourses in contraposition to the discourses guided by the history of life and by the affections that constituted them in the relationship with the city from childhood to adulthood when they became urbanists. It was concluded that, for the urbanists consulted, the children's city does not constitute an object of social representation when analyzed according to the norm of objectivity (the child as another). When analyzing the expression “children's city”, according to the norm of originality (I-child), urbanists intuitively access important scientific foundations that reveal its potential for reification. The social representation of children in urban space, from the perspective of spatial lovingness, was only possible when urban planners allowed themselves to think like atypical adults.