URBAN SPACES AND EXERCISE OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE CITY OF PORTO ALEGRE

This essay presents discourses that criticize the segregation on metropolitan areas taking cultural expressions produced by diverse social characters as a starting point. The article describes places in the city of Porto Alegre that can are considered free zones where citizenship rights can be freely experienced comparing them to the urban pattern based on the construction of fortified enclaves. The study combines different methodologies. The main goal of the essay is to analyze cultural movements and practices that criticize forms of control of ordinary life in the city. Free zones where citizenship rights can be freely experienced in Porto Alegre are described. In these spaces, rules of social control are subverted or neutralized, indicating a new pattern of urban control, different from the model of exposed by some critical criminological discourses. The results demonstrates conflict and social mediation, not definitive answers. They indicate the production of new forms of urban sociability different from the pattern of urban segregation.