Historical routes of religious festivals in Recife: discovering relationships between lines, movements and urbanities

Abstract

This work aims to show the relationship between morphology and religious festivals through the use of spatial syntax, highlighting the design of some of the main religious processions in the city of Recife. Urban history shows that Brazilian cities, as well as those in the Northeast, configured their spaces under the influence of the passage of Catholic celebrations. The central idea of the work is to understand how the routes of processions, through the “spaces of choices” produced by passers-by and devotees, can be compatible with the axes of displacement and visibility in the form of lines or rectilinear stretches of streets. Line connections in space syntax are always made between shorter paths, as is the logic of festive routes, signaling a possible rapprochement between the two logics. The sinuous form of the procession, superimposed on the straight lines of the syntax, can also reveal whether there is any topological nexus in the festive route that is, at least, transversal to the elements that are part of the urban form (local and global integration and normalized choice and normalized integration), showing that the Brazilian street has always been a lively space for meetings.