On Allotopia: The Spatial Accumulation of Difference in Bixiga (São Paulo, Brazil)

Abstract

This article will unfold a longe durée spatial biography of the urban area of Bixiga (São Paulo, Brazil) to probe the particular role of space in the conflation of different cultural practices and territorial claims. The extended case study bridges indigenous, colonial, and postcolonial urbanization as they amalgamated an intricate assemblage of material and cultural strata. Combined historical urban analysis and fieldwork allow to uncover how the resulting urban milieu integrates discrepant urban worlds, perpetually iterating between centrality and marginality, innovation and degradation, oppression and resistance. Building on Foucault’s (1984) conception of heterotopia, Bixiga will surface as an allotopia, a place that accommodates, cumulates, and celebrates a multitude of differences. It sheds light, this way, on more insurgent histories of urbanism, where urban space is piecemeal forged through contentious struggles over space in the city.

Culture-Led Place-Making and Heterotopic Brand Building: A Comparative Approach between Ljubljana and Porto

“…Thus, “heterotopias are something like counter-sites in which all the other real sites that can be found within a given culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” (Lafazani, 2013, p. 5). Places that accommodates and accumulates difference, and, at the same time, are “in itself different, deviant, and other than the assumed norm,” can also fit in the term allotopia (Stevens & De Meulder, 2019, p. 401). The financial architectures articulated around the emergence of the so-called cultural economy in urban areas have placed culture at the center of urban development, which has also meant a change in the symbolic codes of the city and in the balance of powers between different social actors (Zukin, 1982, 1995).…”

Cidade em preto e branco: turismo, memória e as narrativas reivindicadas da São Paulo Negra

“…Em contrapartida, a falta de um conhecimento mais amplo sobre as origens e história do distrito acaba por privilegiar essa presença asiática em detrimento da negra, quando ambas poderiam coexistir sem preterimentos. (CASTRO, 2006;MARZOLA, 1979;STEVENS;DE MEULDER, 2019).…”