New and old commercial forms in urban space production in medium cities: urban centrality, spatial practices and consumption

Abstract

In the contemporary period, the Brazilian's cities undergo changes in the new commercial forms emergence, which radically transformed the relationship between retail trade with the city and its structure, as we can see with the hypermarkets. The Medium cities, particularly, were the examples in which the changes in spatial structure were noted with more evident, resulting in many urban and city restructuring. However, the city is also the place to live and the commerce and services also organize themselves in resist ways and dynamics and it is necessary considers this to understand the contemporary urban space. The public markets are maybe the main space form of trade that portrays these permanencies, allowing for distinct sociability and different spatial practices of those from hypermarkets. In this way, we can do hypothesis that the new commerce forms - especially supermarkets - and the old commercial forms - the public market in particular - establish a contradictory relationship between competition and complementarity between them, in relation to consumption and the spatial practices that require and reveal. Their performances and their spatial interactions are complex and ultimately transform the city structure as far as the urban center itself (on the city scale and the urban network scale) is also enhanced and/or redefined. This is articulated, from the standpoint of space-time, with scales and longer time interregnum, the effort to analyze the relations between these trade forms and the city from an interescalar perspective as from necessary spatial scales. (AU)