Deslocamento como experiência urbana: uma cartografia crítica e sensível da Avenida Goiás em Goiânia

Abstract

This study analyzes walking as an urban experience, taking Avenida Goiás, in Goiânia, as its object of study. The research is based on the understanding that urban design directly influences how pedestrians experience the city, especially in contexts marked by the predominance of the automobile. Although Avenida Goiás presents physical characteristics that initially suggest favorable conditions for walking, such as wide sidewalks and a central median, the everyday experience reveals discontinuities, obstacles, and an environment that is not conducive to permanence. The research adopts a qualitative and exploratory approach grounded in critical and sensitive cartography of urban space. The methodology is based on direct experience with the place through walking, on-site observation, photographic records, and analysis of pedestrian flows, uses, and everyday appropriations. The spatial focus covers the section between Rua 3, Avenida Anhanguera, and Rua 4, chosen for its intense pedestrian movement and strong symbolic significance within the city. The theoretical framework draws on authors who discuss walking as an aesthetic, political, and everyday practice, including Francesco Careri, Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel de Certeau. Walking is understood not merely as functional movement, but as an act of resistance, a producer of meaning, and a means of building bonds with urban space. Sidewalk vitality, mixed uses, and daily practices are analyzed as essential elements for sustaining urban life. The study also presents a historical overview of Goiânia’s urban formation, shaped by modernist ideals, a car-oriented planning logic, and the prioritization of motorized mobility. Over time, processes such as urban expansion, real estate speculation, verticalization, and the residential emptying of the city center have contributed to the fragmentation of the urban fabric and the deterioration of public spaces. Avenida Goiás, conceived as a symbolic and monumental axis of the new capital, encapsulates these contradictions between its original design and contemporary lived experience.