Several social transformations had an impact on the port-city relationship dialoguing with the needs of each historical context. With the spread of cities towards new centralities, port areas and historic urban centers went through a process of emptying services, residents, and experiences. It is true that, since the implementation of neoliberal policy agendas in Brazil, areas of historic and port interest have become targets of interventions to reactivate and trade their landscapes, sometimes considering tourist use. Aligned with these policies and with the advent of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Maritime Passenger Terminals – MPTs were built in the ports of the cities of Natal, Salvador, Fortaleza and Recife. We start from the assumption that the MPTs were constituted from pre-defined political arenas to provide a tourist development to these locations considered obsolete. Thus, the thesis proposal aims to understand the relationship between the constitution of political arenas formulated in the scenario of the connection between tourism, port areas and historic centers, considering that the arenas direct a perception of hegemonic tourist development in the cities of Natal - Rio Grande do Norte and Recife – Pernambuco in the implementation of MPTs to reactivate tourism in historic centers. The methodology is divided into six stages, considering phenomenology as an epistemological school; the bibliographical survey of articles, theses, dissertations and books of the research's theoretical approach; the research universe comprising public and private agents and society; semi-structured interview with open questionnaire as a research instrument; collection of documents, minutes, management reports and official information from bodies linked to the arenas; and use of Bourdieu's theory of the field, habitus and capital as a basis for analyzing the collected data. Having achieved the research objectives, it is expected that the results can elucidate the following aspects: a) understanding of the formation and performance of political arenas in port and historic areas; b) understanding of the constitution of a tourist field that has a specific logic based on the actions of agents equipped with habitus and capital(s); c) aid in the construction of a concept, based on Bourdieusian logic, of a tourist capital that is produced and reproduced autonomously; d) consideration of the consequences and opportunities of the development logic thought by the arenas for the port and historic areas; e) identify possible new approaches to tourism development; f) rethinking a look at the port-city relationship contextualized from the perspective of the tourist use of spaces; and g) present a development proposal that is capable of dialogue in the reactivation of historic centers and port areas based on tourism. It is possible that by presenting these possible results, the research can contribute to thinking about the political arena and tourist development for port and historic areas, considering them as spaces and agents of interest for targeted tourist use and oriented to the most appropriate use. of opportunities.