Territorial Processes and Landscape: Port in the City of Vitoria (ES/Brazil)

Abstract

The phenomenon of ports in the city may be associated with socioeconomic relations of different temporal and spatial orders, always buoyed by global issues. This article addresses this phenomenon at local level, approaching the ports modernization, urban evolution and transformation of the territory and the landscape of the capital of Espírito Santo (Vitória/ES/ Brazil), from its genesis to the contemporary context.
The replacement of the old pier for the modern harbor in the late 19th century; the urban and economical restructuration of the old village in the form of trade square, in the twentieth century; the expansion and diversification of port activity in distant area from the first port city core in the 1960's; the expansion of industrial plants and retroport areas in the last decades of the last century; and the new cycle of expansion of port activities on metropolitan sphere, in the XXI century, are among the factors that change, permanently, the territorial and landscape reconfiguration of Vitória. This work seeks to elucidate the phenomenon of ports in the city from historical processes contextualized in the Espírito Santo’s Capital, in which we observe the territorial production of the harbor and the city, through the so-called modernization and expansion of both. The sharing of the land use reveals from the start a relation of dependency and proximity between the functions of urban space and port activity itself. Then we observe the functional separation between city and port, yet remains the physical and visual proximity, from urban evolution and occupation. Currently we
acknowledge the competition for territory associated to the social and environmental impacts, affecting urban landscape and life. The contemporaneity shows the permanence of the dispute between city and port for the urban and metropolitan territory, associated with socio-environmental impacts, affecting landscape and urban life. To mark the discussion of alteration of territories by the logic of capital, in this study under the prism of port activity, we resort to the disciplinary field of geography, starting with Milton Santos and David Harvey, both hard critics to the local domination unmeasured by capital, at the expense of serious environmental and socio-cultural impacts.