Fear and segregation in the city: sociabilities at stake in a fortified enclaves context

Abstract

This research proposal starts from the understanding of segregation and auto-segregation dynamics, which took place in big brazillian cities since the 70s, conducting to a fortified enclaves reproduction practice, as put by Caldeira (2000). In a feedback movement, the insecurity of living in the big city receives architectural and urbanistic answers: high walls, fences, security systems, private guard teams, security cabins, a permanent surveillance state, as Bauman (2014) said. The consequential sociability of this dynamics begins to be ruled by the feeling of fear, intolerance and constant threat. How can this city organization way alter the sociabilities and the urban space perception? This dynamics generates a movement of exclusivity overvaluation, denial of otherness; contributes for intolerance and to the construction of a fear market, which sells the security feeling (even though it might not be real) under the form of closed allotments, gated communities and private security systems. As field research strategy, this work will be using spatial sudies of the gated communities, in order to investigate how these allotments architecture and morphology, relates to the security strategies; and qualitative social studies (based on interviews and questionnaires) with residents of closed communities located in medium size cities in the São Paulo state country (Campinas, Itatiba, Limeira and São Carlos) about their perspectives on urban fear and their ways of using the collective spaces inside the community and public spaces outside them. This research discusses how the whole apparatus built on fear, which results in ways of living and spaces rooted in this affection, manifests itself in everyday socializations. (AU)