A Tradição do novo : uma análise das transformações da Avenida Brasil na cidade de Anápolis (1960-2014)

Abstract

Anápolis is a city with specific features at national, regional and municipal levels, as much for being located between two capitals — Brasília and Goiânia — as for being in a constant transformation process of its shape and urban landscape. Since the city’s rural origins, its insertion into modernity, with the railroad creation, alongside the influence of late modernism with the construction of Brasilia until the expansion of the industry towards the central region of Brazil, Anápolis projects itself into the national picture as a city that is open to capitalistic techniques of production, reproduction and appropriation of urban space. In order to develop this research, we adopted the Avenida Brasil, in Anápolis, Goiás, as our object of analysis, which in its origins used to be known as BR 14 — a road connecting Anápolis to Ceres in its north, and Anápolis to Goiânia in its south. Gradually, this axis has gained a major importance for the flow of people and merchandise loads. After the inauguration of Brasília, the city of Anápolis started its interventional processes, especially regarding the infrastructure, thus establishing a course of intense transformation in its urban shape and landscape. The issues addressed in this work are focused on a regional scale and particularly on an intraurban scale. In this research, we will analyze how the impacts caused by urban and infrastructural interventions that occurred in Avenida Brasil interfere in the dynamics of circulation, and mainly how it affects pedestrian mobility and its relation with the landscape of the city. Progressively, the saturation of the road capacity is generating events that reduce the effectiveness not only of Avenida Brasil itself, but the city as a whole, given the importance of this arterial road at the urban context. We understand that the comprehension regarding the dynamics involving the Av. Brazil, as well as its pedestrians and the landscape in which they are inserted, are crucial in order to think deeply about the production of urban space in Anápolis. This way, we clarify the relevance of studies concerning the targeted management of investments in mobility and in an urban and socially fair infrastructure.