Social practices in both malls of Presidente Prudente: connections and/or disconnections with urban spaces?

Abstract

This proposal is linked to the Thematic Project FAPESP "Contemporary economic logics: medium cities and consumption", in which the spatial practices and economic logics related to consumption and space are taken as possibilities to make reading of the urban and of the city transformations in six medium cities: Marilia, Presidente Prudente, São Carlos, São José do Rio Preto, Ribeirão Preto, and Londrina. Its specific focus is on the two shopping centers in the city of Presidente Prudente, the Prudente Park Shopping and Prudenshopping, with a view to a comparative study between them, taking into account identified differences, related mainly to the location, audience, and size target of built area. We will emphasize the spatial practices of its different users, how they interrelate and distinguish public and private spaces, how they relate to the sociospatial diversity, present in these spaces, and how they deal with forms of social control of these malls. To this end, we intend to perform everyday observation practices of users (consumers, workers, and traders) on different days and times, as well as to conduct interviews with users previously identified as representing different groups of both malls. With this, we hope to bring a contribution to reflection on the relationship between space, time, social control, and consumption centers and malls in your joints or not with the wider spaces of the city and develop and test a set of methodological procedures which will subsequently be applied to the study of this subject in all medium cities to be studied under the Thematic Project.(AU)