The citizen participation on the leisure policies boundaries: implications and protagonisms. The case Community Center Project, in the city of Porto Alegre

Abstract

This article analyzes in which way a peripheral community of Porto Alegre appropriates itself of a public space destined to operate leisure policies in the 70s and 80s and transforms it in an instrument of discussion and wider social development. It briefly reviews the history of the Project Community Center in the city of Porto Alegre, in that period, and contraposes the ideal and objectives of the Public Administration with the perspectives of the “educational staff” and the understanding of the resident-collaborators with the investigation. It ends presenting the impacts generated by the Project Community Center in the community’s perspective, as well as the limitations and critics identified by the resident-collaborators.