Production of tourist territories in Ceará

Abstract

Socio-spatial transformations have marked the coastal zone of Ceará in the last two decades. There is planning aimed at the constitution of an economic base based on modern maritime practices, notably tourism and the vilegiature. Such activities make possible the insertion of technical systems with the objective of expanding of tourist flows and modernization in the beach areas of Ceará. This article comprehends the unfoldings of the public and private interventions in the West Coast of Ceará, as a multiscale process capable of modify the political, economic, social and cultural bases of the territory. For this happen, theoretical reference on the tourism planning, the vectors of urban expansion and the modern maritime practices was used. Still, official documents allowed the analysis of the tourism policies, while the structured interviews, the photographic and cartographic collections, made possible the understanding of the socio-spatial dynamics in the municipalities. It was found that the process of “touristification” of the Costa do Sol Poente not only elicit the increase in flows and fixed associated with tourism activity, but also new typologies related to maritime vilegiature and the complementarity between the both mentioned practices.

Keywords: Tourism, Planning, West Coast of Ceará.