Lugar de reencontro: permanência da vida no Parque Rio Branco

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis investigates Parque Rio Branco, an urban park in Fortaleza (Brazil), as a symbolic territory of dispute, memory, and socio-environmental re-existence. The research analyzes the role of urban parks as spaces of life, encounter and environmental education, questioning ontemporary planning and management practices of the city from the perspectives of environmental justice and the right to the city. Drawing from the park’s history of neglect and its recent reform — marked by the absence of community dialogue and the prioritization of aesthetic and political criteria — the study reveals how the technocratic urban model continues to disregard essential dimensions of belonging, ecology, and community. The work is grounded in theoretical contributions by Milton Santos, David Harvey, Giselle Tanaka, Nêgo Bispo, Ailton Krenak and others, whose reflections on technique, territory, planning, and coexistence support a critical reading of the contemporary city. The methodological approach aligns with popular technical advisory practices and insurgent participatory planning, understanding design as a political and educational act. From this perspective, the park is conceived as a space for ecological learning and community emancipation, where the coexistence of humans and non-humans forms the basis for a new urban condition — that of florestania (forest citizenship). Interweaving ideas from environmental education, popular technical assistance and community struggles for green areas and common spaces, the work maintains a direct relationship with the lived experience of the park and with Movimento Proparque, which has defended it for over three decades. The study also draws from other brazilian experiences, such as the naturalized parks of Fortaleza (CE), the Aldeia de Carapicuíba Ecological Park (SP), and the Pedra de Xangô Network Park (BA), where nature and historicity are recognized as subjects of rights and co-authors of urban space. Methodologically, the research is structured as participatory action research, integrating empirical observation, community workshops, document research and interdisciplinary theoretical review. The goal is to collaboratively develop a community-based intervention project for Parque Rio Branco, prioritizing the creation of spaces for environmental education and social encounter that respond to the gaps left by the recent reform and foster the park's continued existence as a vibrant space of life. The project thus emerges as an open, evolving tool for community use and as a political instrument for ongoing advocacy in defense of the park. Finally, the text proposes a poetic and critical reading of the city: beneath the urban pavement lies a latent forest, made of rivers, affections, and resistances. To reforest the park is to enact an act of decolonizing urbanism, a practice of florestania and reconciliation between technique and life. In this sense, the park is not merely a leisure space but a territory of life’s persistence, human and non-human alike — where the act of designing becomes an act of care, and public space a seed of future coexistence