for change. The essay by Bruno Santa Cecília refers to notable results created by architectural projects such as the Copan building and Ibirapuera Park. In addition to governments, he reminds us, the private enterprise also plays a fundamental role in the creation of qualified urban experiences. Alternatives for reinventing the collective space are also the theme of reflections by Marcos Rosa. Why not look at streets, avenues and highways as possibilities? The opening of emblematic roadways such as Paulista Avenue to pedestrians, on weekends, and the public demonstrations held on the streets of large Brazilian cities are ways of confronting urban barriers. Reversing the logic of segregation that has been created in Brazilian cities is not a simple task. Unlike the right to collective urban space, the privatized physical wall is regulated by the Civil Code.1 A new approach to think about cities is needed for the building of a less unequal society, as Gilson Rodrigues proposes in his interview. The will and necessity of resistance to the diffusion of these patterns of exclusion is not minor, and is represented here in brief records on the 2013 protests in Rio de Janeiro through the eyes of Pedro Victor Brandão. To conclude, this chapter is closely connected with the projects selected in the public call and presented in the final section of this book. If here walls are identified, there proposals for how to breach them are presented. Ideas such as the walkway by the architects Sauermartins + Metropolitano or the Escola sem muros [School without walls] by Sem Muros Arquitetura Integrada, are solutions capable of bridging the adverse conditions that surround them. Farol da Maré [Maré Lighthouse], by Pedro Évora, and the project by the group Gru.a and Pedro Varella are fine examples of the possibility of overcoming physical barriers by opening new views from which to reflect about the city. Each of the seventeen projects fight in a specific way against the conditions of impediments imposed by their contexts, not restricting themselves to the present limitations but imagining alternative possibilities. They remember, as the
geographer Milton Santos put it, that “[…] The world is a set of possibilities and not just a set of realities […] other worlds can be created from the same materials”. The map The map proposed to draw attention to the problem of intra-urban borders, brings a selection of 30 Brazilian cities, distributed among the five regions of the country. Each of them presents the overlap of topography and road infrastructure to create their background. This information is, however, treated with a graphic abstraction that omits markings of coastal line, water, green areas or any other elements conventionally used to represent cities. On this resulting canvas, urban barriers are drawn. Large ruptures in the urban fabric and stark contrasts in the built morphology of cities, which suggest moments of division, are identified from the rich database developed by QUAPÁ (Quadro do Paisagismo no Brasil), a research developed at FAU-USP since 1994 that examines the main structures of the urban form and the systems of free space of Brazilian cities This research is the source from which the different types of physical divisions were extracted to be displayed on the map. Of the 23 categories surveyed by QUAPÁ, 10 were considered barriers to be shown in the Solid Divisions map. To these categories colors were applied— to differentiate them from each other—over satellite images—to show the reality on the ground. The resulting mosaic becomes a mixture of painting and map, with the beginning and the end of each city not clearly marked, where the fragments of the extracted divisions construct a patchwork of real moments of urban separation. 1. ” See Brazil, Law no.10.406, January 10, 2002: Código Civil [Civil Code]. Available at: http:// www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/ leis/2002/l10406.htm. Accessed on: 24/04/2018.