“Learning From Beach Park”: O lugar do complexo turístico-imobiliário no processo de urbanização turística da Região Metropolitana de Fortaleza (Ceará)

Abstract

Tourism urbanization is related to a socio-spatial process of postmodern character and supported by leisure and consumption practices, unlike to the process of urbanization linked to industrialization, related to work and production. Among the spatial manifestations of the tourism urbanization, we can highlight the role of the theme parks as inducers of the origin and development of tourist cities and places. Beach Park, a tourism and leisure complex, was inaugurated in 1989 from a beach tent, located on the coast of Aquiraz, a municipality adjoining Fortaleza-Ceará (Brazil). Since then, it has been one of the anchors in the process of developing tourism in Ceará. Over the years, the water park has redefined not only its own territory, incorporating new areas into the park and building tourist-real estate developments, but also induced the urbanization of the Porto das Dunas beach. In this context, the objective of this apper is to analyze, based on a historical and critical perspective, the role of the Beach Park Complex in the process of urbanization of the Fortaleza Metropolitan Region (RMF), emphasizing the relationship between spatial dynamics and economic, political and symbolic dimensions caused by the enterprise. Therefore, it establishes as parameters for the analysis the urban evolution of the Porto das Dunas since its implantation and articulation with the metropolitan territory; the relationship with the natural environment of the beach and its privatization process; the hybrid spatial character of the enterprise, and finally the realization that the production of a private, controlled and safe space devoted to leisure and tourism exacerbates socio-spatial fragmentation and segregation.