Abandono de estações férreas: cartografia sensível na fronteira Brasil-Uruguay

Abstract

For about a century, the railway system was involved in a more active way in urban dynamics, being part of history and people's lives. The railway stations were part of this scenario, because they were the places where passengers and merchandise embarked and disembarked. However, from the fifties on, the railway system began to decline and, around 1990, passenger transportation became extinct in many cities. The railway stations became obsolete and, consequently, abandoned territories were created around them. From the approach between the theories of contemporary urbanism and the philosophy of difference, the main objective of this research is to map and investigate the territories of abandoned railway stations in the twin cities of Jaguarão-Rio Branco and Santana do Livramento-Rivera, on the Brazil-Uruguay border. The aim is to understand the relations of this abandonment with urban practices in contemporaneity, enabling the opening for new ways of re-reading the city taking into account our sensibility. The study is developed through the method of sensitive cartography, which aims to explore a territory from the bodily immersion of the researcher in the plane of experience. The results announce, with the maps of encounters and the maps of intensities, the potentials through the ruptures marked in the urban mesh and in the body of the cartographer who walks through the train tracks to the railway stations. With this, we conclude by the overlapping of these maps, that these territories are made up of multiple layers that reveal stories, encounters, connections, feelings, and memories. The sensitive experience brings us closer to the real plane, in a slower pace, where the importance of speech, listening, pause, and silence prevails, as a powerful way to feel and experience the city through our sensitivity.