Touristification, centrality and spatial configuration: : an analysis in Itapema and Porto Belo-SC

Abstract

The paper consists of a configurational analysis to understand the urban expansion associated with the phenomenon of polynuclearization in the Itapema-Porto Belo system, located on the coast of Santa Catarina/Brazil, which has witnessed demographic growth resulting from the intense touristification of the last decades. If, on the one hand, the landscape is the driving force of urbanization and economic development, on the other hand, it suffers from the effects of predatory tourism, real estate speculation and urban spreading. Under a morphological approach, it is intended to understand how urbanization, read through a configurational perspective and stimulated by touristification, affected the dynamics of the existing centralities in the settlement. For that, the centralities are evaluated at four levels: urban/morphological active center, traditional center, subcenters and specialized centers. The research is supported by the Theory of Social Logic of Space (Space Syntax), by assuming the city as a system of interdependencies, so that changes in parts will imply changes in the whole. The results obtained for the urban system, in its configurational reading, indicate the existence of a notorious phenomenon of polynuclearization in the Itapema-Porto Belo system, where centralities of different scales and configurations present specific and hierarchical functions in the urban fabric.