If this street ceased to be ours

“If this street, if this street were mine…”, says the popular song that crossed generations teaching, in a joke, that what belongs to everyone must be taken care of delicacy. But what if it ceased to be ours? If you stopped being a meeting space and passages to turn into a vigorous corridor, surrounded by invisible ordinances and walls designed by profitability spreadsheets? The desire to rip out the floor with bright pebbles – gesture of affection and belonging – gives way to the calculation that measures each square meter in numbers and every body that passes at risk.

As the journalist Priscila Mengue showed in a report published in the STATE OF S. PAULO – “Sao Paulo has a boom of streets sales” – the wave of privatization of alleys in the capital is not an isolated episode, but part of an dynamic that transforms what is shared into accounting assets under business control. In this displacement, not only disappears traces of the map: it is erased what sustains the coexistence between different.

The issue goes beyond the discussion of the amount paid to the public coffers. It must be understood that we are facing one of the contemporary “fencing”: if in the past centuries, fields and goods that supported communities were surrounded, there are no alleys and squares. Not with fences, but with decrees, bills and contracts that transfer public life management to the command of private interest. The article recalls that “the keyword is reversibility.” What is observed is the opposite: the suppression of a stage of citizenship and the restriction of common access. The street sold does not return, is the suppression of a stage of citizenship and a symbol of social closure.

The phenomenon expands and assumes new forms. In 2017, municipal management opened a public call aiming at the sale of “nesga” and “leftovers” of streets – excerpts resulting from works and expropriations. Although land has been transferred, the assumption that there are available “leftovers” reveals a way of thinking incompatible with the needs of the metropolis. In a region marked by narrows, lack of green areas and absence of places of permanence, the notion of “leftover” is inadmissible. These fragments could be incorporated into policies of micro – places where one can sit, plant, breathe, and find – rather than treaties as surplus in the balance sheet.

The transfer of shared areas redefines the right to the city, condition characterized by unrestricted access, shared management and possibility of appropriation. Alleys that housed everyday activities – children playing, neighbors talking, informal trade – give way to closed complexes. Environments previously permeable to various uses become governed by private norms, with surveillance agents that delimit possible forms of interaction.

The consequences extend through dimensions that go beyond business. During the pandemic, it was evident that access to open areas is not luxury but vital condition to the physical and mental well-being of the population. By selling circulation and breathing micro-school, vulnerabilities are deepened and environmental impacts are expanded: Privatization fragments the environment, creates controlled “islands” and transfers costs-heat waves and floods-around.

The official narrative prefers a technical language. There is talk of “use of structured soil” or “new purpose” attributed to public places. These are expressions that hide a political choice: that the constructed means should be optimized aiming at capital generation, not sustaining common life. Priscila Mengue’s report shows the tip of the process. What is submerged is a paradigm change in which the public power, weakened in its role as planner, is no longer architect of what is shared and becomes intermediate in the sale of his own heritage.

The challenge is not to prevent the transfer of the next alley on the agenda. It is expanding the debate and asking: What are we deciding to build for the next generations? A network of limited walls and rights or a means in which what belongs to all remains democratic, open and alive?

Maybe it’s time to remember the song again: “If this street, if this street were mine …”. She did not speak of ownership, but of care; Not on walls, but about belonging. Today, by turning shared paths into controlled corridors, we fail to rip out the floor with shiny pebbles and pave it with surveillance devices. The road sold does not erase a trace from the map – redefines the meaning of coexistence. And if this street is no longer ours, the entire map risks not belonging to us anymore.

*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the young Pan.