Fractalscopic Quotidian / Cotidiano Fractaloscópico: The Square as Social Project, the Social Project as a Space in Everyday Life

This chapter situates itself within a case study that features the construction and popular reoccupation of a public square in one of Rio’s most violently policed areas. Complexo do Alemão has been considered crime ridden but, from within, is a critical space for popular culture and community self-organization. These kinds of sociophysical landscapes can be seen as fractals. Usually this term is deployed negatively, to describe the chaotic and segregated terrain marked by radical asymmetries. But this chapter pushes to look from within the fractal to see the outside worlds. It proposes that Rio should be seen as more than a disjointed and segregated city of hills and asphalt, and, instead, as a composition of multiple, coproduced phenomena that resemble a kaleidoscopic image and a set of crossroads. The square—Praça para Alemão Ver on Avenida Central—represents a deviation from more centralized actions perpetuated from a distant governing body.