A natureza enquanto mercadoria no espaço urbano da cidade do Rio de Janeiro: osbairros do Rio Comprido e de Santa Teresa

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze as two nearby neighborhoods, Rio Comprido and Santa Teresa, are so different in regard to space organization, nature use as resource, and preserving speech in the context of urban expansion of Rio de Janeiro city. There is a different use of urban soil by several agents, in which they do it though social practices in everyday life, achieving a peculiar sociospace organization, contradictions and conflicts. As one of the elements of this peculiarity, we have an urban landscape built by forest fragments related to Mata Atlântica, concerned to physical and mountainous traits. This nature as commodity is valued while it is preserved, it means, the value of use and the value of exchange of “natural property”, still controlled by market laws, are defined as the standard of urban life, according to property stratedies. So, the conservation does not mean that necessarily a consciousness is related to environmental services, in which nature can offer. It is in this context that, nowadays, visually nearby spaces become so far from each other, because Santa Teresa neighborhood, as opposed to Rio Comprido, shows traits clearly more preserved, in regard to forest vegetation, even it has favela as well. Although, exactly in this contradiction, it is possible to think again the actions and to look for alternatives, considering the space as resistance of discovery and not only alienation, with potentialities of building a group and ecological consciousness.