YOUTH AND PUBLIC SPACES OF LEISURE AND CULTURE: STUDY ON THE PROCESSES OF USE AND APPROPRIATION OF URBAN SPACE IN SÃO MIGUEL DO GOSTOSO - RN.
Keywords: Youth; Young people; Use and Appropriation of Space; Urban Space; Tourism; Sao Miguel do Gostoso.
ABSTRACT
Urban space brings together the actions of the society that creates and recreates it according to the actions, ambitions and intentions regarding it. In this sense, it is a reflection of social dynamics, at the same time that it is characterized as a social condition, that is, it is society itself implemented. For young people, public spaces for leisure and culture, for playful sociability such as those on the street, squares, sports courts, cultural events and parties represent meeting points for groups and tribes, where bonds are established in a non-committal way, values, recognitions and identifications (ALBUQUERQUE, 2006). Therefore, access to these spaces is essential for youth development. However, urban space is experienced differently by individuals according to their belonging to the space and their social and economic insertion, as well as their age group. Given this context, through reflection on the right to the city proposed by Lefebvre(2001), the present research has the general objective of analyzing and reflecting on the understanding of the forms of use and appropriation of public leisure and cultural spaces for the youth of São Miguel do Gostoso-RN, from the last 15 years. The hypothesis worked is that as a fishing village the general feeling was that the city belonged to everyone, and through the intense transformations of urban space, caused, above all, by the “modernizations” brought about by the advance of tourism over the last 15 years, significant changes were introduced in the forms of use and appropriation of public spaces for youth leisure and culture. In this scenario, the transformation and privatization of spaces has been provided, resulting in relationships of exclusion and/or marginalization of young people in the (dis)use and (dis)appropriation of these spaces. The methodology included a bibliographic survey, reviewing the literature in the discussion of the categories of urban space and youth, and empirical research through an ethnographic approach that, allowing the researcher greater experience in approaching/distancing with the subjects researched, provided a vision of character holistic view of lived and transformed space. The methodology was developed using intergenerational interactions through collective dynamics with young people involving their families to reconstitute social memory, provoking active reflection, dynamizing the memory of spaces in the historical process, as well as allowing to understand the differentiated perception of relationships with space, its culture and traditions in the short period of childhood and youth in diverse transformations. In addition to participant observations during field visits, to obtain data, the study used playful group dynamics and semi-structured interviews treated in a qualitative and quantitative way. Finally, it is understood that despite the changes triggered in the urban space of Gostoso, public spaces still remain as places of socialization, with the beach being the main space for young people to sociably be.