Urban weaving metaphors: a case study in Serrinha neighborhood, Fortaleza

Abstract

This paper explores three levels of interpretation of the urban interweave metaphor, exemplified in the Serrinha neighborhood of Fortaleza. The first approach observes Fortaleza's urban mesh from above, through common perspective for urbanists but removed from the day-to-day experience though no less relevant in relation to the urban mesh: a patchwork, pieces of landscapes, flow, uses, connected by interpretations and diagnosis. From a macro view to a micro, one observes the Serrinha neighborhood and in it a specific locality. The second view concerns the open body, which needs to be sutured. It is the problems identified in this place, where the consequences of the irregularities of the larger system emerge at a point that makes explicit its urgent need for healing. The third approach concerns an interweave made up of invisible lines, nuance that compound a process, a work team, the construction of local identity and the project, which stitch together the goals and the transformations related to the levels previously analyzed.