As ações dos agentes de captação de eventos turístico e suas implicações no reforço de centralidades urbanas nas cidades brasileiras

Abstract

The study analyzes the spatial implications of discourses and actions by public and private tourism development agents, within the business and events approach, in the production of space in large Brazilian cities. The study assesses the importance of business and events tourism in Brazilian cities outside of its dynamic center – Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo – and in which conditions and how the public and private investments from this sector are made in those cities. The conceptual basis of the approach is the territorial division of labor and the uneven development in the process of geographic space and capital reproduction. Thus, we demonstrate that such public and private investments in business and events tourism, where they take place, contribute to (re)produce and/or strengthen fragmentations and centralities in the geographic space. This process has in its basis socio-spatial contradictions from contemporary neoliberal urbanization itself, evoked for business and events attraction, but which simultaneously marginalizes the citizen from the employment of the “right to the city” in Brazil. The discourses of public and private tourism development agents regarding business and events in cities are presented as solution for urban requalification; other occasional urban improvements with the privatization of public equipment; public/private partnerships to build and operate public equipment; deregulation of social functions and strengthening of private real estate businesses; opening for the attraction of foreign investments among others, implying on the neoliberal type of urbanization. Via analysis of: discourses by directors from the hotel chain associated with Convention Visitors & Bureau; data from the Tourism Statistic Directory (2018) by ICCA (2018); the trade fairs calendar from UBRAFE (2019) and the city plans from the main Brazilian cities used in the study; as well as public statements by public and private tourism managers, it is shown that overtime there has been some strengthening of business and events activities and visits to cities where capitalism is more dynamic, in the city of São Paulo, followed by Rio de Janeiro, where there is constant reinvestment and innovation in urban services and infrastructure, in tourism-oriented entertainment and support equipment. Thus, the “business and events leftovers” that arrive in Brazil or which are created in the country are fought over by peripheral cities, where the regional economy is only complementary to the centralized Brazilian economic-productive arrangement, especially in São Paulo.