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Leisure and urbanisation in Brazil from

the 1950s to the 1970s
a b
Cleber Dias & Victor de Andrade Melo
a
Faculdade de Educação Física, Universidade Federal de Goiás,
Goiás, Brazil
b
Programação de Pós‐Graduação em História Comparada,
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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 Leisure Studies
Vol. 30, No. 3, July 2011, 333–343

Leisure and urbanisation in Brazil from the 1950s to the 1970s

Cleber Diasa* and Victor de Andrade Melob
a
Faculdade de Educação Física, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiás, Brazil;
b
Programação de Pós-Graduação em História Comparada, Universidade Federal do Rio de
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Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

(Received 28 September 2010; final version received 29 December 2010)
Taylor and Francis
RLST_A_552190.sgm

Leisure
10.1080/02614367.2011.552190
0261-4367
Original
Taylor
02011
00
Professor
cag.dias@bol.com.br
000002011
&Studies
Article
Francis
CleberDias
(print)/1466-4496 (online)

This article discusses the relationship between the change in the conception of
leisure and the acceleration of the urbanisation process in Brazil from the 1950s to
the 1970s. In order to achieve this goal, we used Veja magazine as a privileged
source, as well as a literature review. Created in the 1960s and uninterruptedly
published up to today, this weekly magazine has been characterised by its
widespread distribution throughout Brazil and by its interest in subjects connected
to social behaviour. We conclude that in the period studied, the growth of the
Brazilian cities, alongside the consolidation of the process of industrialisation,
triggered new behaviours linked to consumption and a new sensitivity towards
nature, dimensions that instituted new forms of leisure. Similarly, the new
postures towards nature, the new consuming habits, as well as the new conceptions
of leisure, influenced the path of urbanisations. As a consequence of this process,
it is possible to notice an enhancement in the offering of services and
governmental concerns related to leisure, as well as the structuring of a field of
investigation around leisure.
Keywords: leisure; history; industrialisation; Brazil; public policies; urbanisation

Introduction
In the field of leisure studies, it seems possible to state that the emergence of a
phenomenon is mainly understood as a consequence of the changes that symbolise
the configuration of modern societies, in a process which was remotely initiated in
the sixteenth century, but was more clearly shaped throughout the eighteenth and the
nineteenth centuries (Burke, 1995; Harwick, 2008; Walton & Walvin, 1983). It is
therefore understood that leisure is delimited by a group of interdependent circum-
stances: industrialisation and a consequent new organisation of work time, new
formations of social classes (the growth of the strength of the bourgeoisie and the
emergence of the working class), new modes of the circulation of goods and new
configurations of cities (Melo, 2010); the last of these being a topic that is closely
related to this study.
The relation between the development of cities and leisure is a constant topic
among scholars in the field. Meller (1976) was one of the first social historians of
leisure to study the relations between the use of free time and urban change in Bristol,
England, between the years 1870 and 1914. Since then, it is possible to see a

*Corresponding author. Email: cag.dias@bol.com.br

ISSN 0261-4367 print/ISSN 1466-4496 online

© 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/02614367.2011.552190
http://www.informaworld.com
 334 C. Dias and V. de Andrade Melo

considerable diversification in approaches to the issue, including the elaboration of

public policies (Bramham, Henry, Mommaas, & van der Poel, 1989; Gratton &
Henry, 2001). Still, a major part of the studies continues to deal with the topic from a
historical perspective, as can be seen in the studies by Csergo (1995), Rappaport
(2000) and Beaven (2005).
Inserted into this scholarly context, this article aims at discussing the relations
between leisure and the acceleration of the urbanisation process in Brazil between the
1950s and the 1970s. In order to achieve this goal, we have undertaken a review of
relevant literature and specifically used the weekly magazine Veja as a privileged
source. Created in the 1960s and still published today, the magazine has always had a
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wide distribution throughout Brazil. Many of Veja’s articles, marked by the maga-
zine’s interest in changing social behaviour, have reported on people’s leisure. Our
approach is more specifically centred on two aspects. The first refers to the spatial
reorganisation of major Brazilian cities during the time period, which arguably accel-
erated the adoption and incorporation of new life styles. This is best characterised by
the enhancement in the possibilities of consumption and of new leisure experiences,
such as the habits of travelling, shopping, practising physical activities and certain
sports. In fact, as the living conditions started being evaluated negatively because of
problems related to the accelerated urbanisation process, a group of new practices
were presented as a solution.
The second aspect, which is linked to the first one, is connected to the growth of
business and governmental initiatives associated with the use of free time in urban
populations. In business, it is possible to highlight the rise in the offering of new
leisure services, such as gymnasiums, restaurants, travel agencies, hotels, resorts,
campsites and other leisure spaces. Within government, actions relating to the elabo-
ration of public policies can also be seen. In both cases, the changes in the configura-
tion of the cities were among the main factors responsible for starting more systematic
leisure associated interventions.

Industrialisation, urbanisation, consumption and leisure

According to Hobsbawm (1994), on the eve of the Second World War all the countries
in the world – with the exception of the UK and Belgium – had 25% of their popula-
tion composed of rural workers. Even in some fairly urbanised countries, such as
France and Sweden, the people living in the country corresponded to at least 35% of
their inhabitants. After 1945, this aspect would change quickly. In Latin America,
there was a 50% decrease in the rural population in 20 years. If in 1940 only four Latin
American cities had a population higher than a million people (Buenos Aires, Mexico
City, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) and only five exceeded 500,000 inhabitants
(Lima, Rosario, Montevideo and Santiago), in the following decades the number of
super populated cities would grow exponentially in the entire continent (Romero,
2001).
This dynamic began in Brazil in the early 1950s, associated with big changes in
the national economy. In spite of the fact that the industrialisation process had already
been well established since the 1930s, and that in the 1940s the country had achieved
self sufficiency in the production of non-durable goods such as food, drinks and
textiles (Furtado, 1983), it was only in the first years of the 1950s that industry was
seen as the leading sector of Brazilian development (Moreira, 2003, p. 178). This
process advanced even further in the government of President Juscelino Kubitschek,1
 Leisure Studies 335

with the enlargement of the production of durable goods for the domestic market. The
development in the capability of producing steel and oil products (gasoline, asphalt
and plastic among others)2 was essential for the improvement in the fabrication of
products that until then were only accessible through importation. The automotive
industry is one of the best examples of this new dynamic: at the end of the 1950s 10
automobile factories had already been set up in Brazil.
In the mid-1960s, when a military coup gave birth to a dictatorship3 in the country,
Brazilian economic policy embraced a new set of strategies in order to continue the
industrialisation process: the government moved towards privileging new areas of
production, such as the electrical, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. As the
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setting up of this industrial park demanded great investments, accessible only to

government companies or major international corporations, the state policies ended up
contributing to the establishment of a model of economic organisation that privileged
foreign capital corporations (Prado & Earp, 2003). As a result of this process, agricul-
tural producers, especially in food industries, which were able to enlarge their agro-
industrial complexes during this period, gradually adopted new technologies. The
small agriculture producers were then faced with severe difficulties and, without the
support of the government, lacked the conditions to become competitive in interna-
tional standards. Agricultural mechanisation reduced the possibilities of work in the
fields, pushing huge numbers to the cities. At the same time, in large cities, the
chances and opportunities of employment were more attractive due to the new indus-
tries, to the growth of civil works and of public services, and to the expansion of
commerce and other services in general.
As a result, eight million people migrated to the main cities in Brazil throughout
the 1950s, about 24% of the rural population of the country at the time. The 1960s saw
14 million migrations, while in the 1970s this number rose to over 17 million. In only
three decades more than 39 million people left the countryside (Mello & Novais,
1998). In São Paulo, the population increased fivefold between the 1950s and the
1970s, surpassing 10 million inhabitants. Rio de Janeiro already registered a popula-
tion of over eight million in 1970 – four times higher than in 1950. A similar process
could be seen in the cities of Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Recife and Salvador
(Mello & Novais, 1998).
In this context, the cities went through many drastic changes for many different
reasons. The construction of industrial parks demanded the reorganisation of the urban
structure, making it capable of attending to the new needs of production and of the
workers and their families, who arrived in increasingly bigger numbers. Many city
areas started being heavily occupied after the establishment of factories and the devel-
opment of new transport alternatives. The growing need to adapt urban space to the
increasing presence of the automobile can be seen as an example of those changes.
The construction of houses and apartment buildings had then to take into account the
presence of the car, often seen as the ‘new family member’. At the beginning of the
1960s, construction laws were altered in many regions in Brazil, demanding that new
housing edifications had their own garage. At the same time, avenues were quickly
built, running the old city over and exalting the ‘definitive arrival of progress’.
Beyond the solid conditions, there was also a shift in the ‘structure of needs’, i.e.,
the desires of the growing urban population. New standards of economic organisation
were accompanied by new aspirations, new world views and new value scales. The
growth in the offering of durable goods in the domestic market altered the expecta-
tions of a considerable parcel of the population. The cities also offered new jobs, often
 336 C. Dias and V. de Andrade Melo

on better wages, which supposedly also meant more opportunities to acquire

consumer goods, with the possibility of easier access to the products of the national
industries. Buying them meant possessing the symbols of progress: cities became the
place where the ‘most modern’ standards of sociability could happen.
As a result of these changes in the urban dynamics, new leisure practices appeared
and were consolidated. Having an automobile or easy access to buses, for example,
stimulated the habit of travelling, especially at a time when the government invested
heavily in motorways. It is important to notice that the ‘Guia 4 Rodas’ (Four Wheels
Guide), until this day one of the best selling travel guides in Brazil (with information
on roads, lodging, monuments, and so on.), was released in the 1960s. The number of
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travelling agencies grew at the same time that apparent improvements were made to
the hotel structure, including the beginning of the Brazilian Motel Club, which offered
good quality hotels at reasonable prices.
The growth in the possibility and of travelling is one of the expressions of the
diffusion of new services and products. Until then, it had been seen as a luxury avail-
able only for a few, and it gradually became a standard desired by an ever wider part
of the population. As Veja informs (17 December 1969): ‘Travelling through Brazil
was no longer a privilege […]. In 1969, 4 million Brazilians travelled’ (p. 74). Most
of those people were after pleasure and entertainment. To a large extent, they were
motivated by the recent expansion in the tourism infrastructure and also by the
economic situation the country was facing at that time, which privileged the produc-
tion of industrialised goods for the domestic market, strengthening the purchasing
power of the urban middle classes. In spite of the fact that those numbers are not truly
representative of the majority of the population, they indicate the emergence of a new
consuming pattern related to leisure practices.
The changes in the way products were commercialised also had implications for
the organisation of leisure. The appearance of shopping malls is an emblematic exam-
ple. Shopping Iguatemi, the first mall in the country, was opened in São Paulo in 1966
and quickly became a privileged place for entertainment. A few years later, Veja (30
January 1974) stated: ‘Definitely, the era of the shopping malls has arrived in Brazil.
Real cities, with their own lives and laws, are now invading the major Brazilian cities’
(p. 40). In fact, those establishments were gradually becoming entertainment
complexes, as a compensation for the reduction of open public spaces and a conse-
quence of real estate speculation.
Arguably, this new dynamic promoted a shift in the identity-making process.
Brazil was clearly immersed in a new structural scenery of political, economic and
cultural influences, which had the USA as a main parameter. As one contemporary
observer wrote:

When the Second World War began, the prevalence of the French culture, in all its facets,
was very strong within us. Paris, romantically seen as an eternal Belle Époque, was the
world center of literature, arts and pleasure. The military catastrophe that isolated us from
Europe and connected us to the United States marked, under the heat of circumstances,
a shift of direction. (Cunha, 1968, p. 9)

As noted by Canclini (1995), regarding the cultural dynamics of Latin America, ‘we
learned to be citizens with Europe, with the United States we learned to be consumers’
(p. 26).
In the end, the escalation of new ways of enjoying free time somehow also
portrayed the desire of showing distinctive modes of consumption. A growing valor-
 Leisure Studies 337

isation in the acquisition of goods may be noticed, especially in the major Brazilian
cities, with services that shaped new leisure practices, such as restaurants, travel agen-
cies, dance clubs, hotels and gyms. As an indication of the new sensibilities in enter-
tainment, the Veja issue for 12 December 1973, stated: ‘The modern holidays are no
longer a privilege of a reduced caste, especially for a people that faces the auspicious
growing phase in all its statistical fronts’ (p. 82).

Leisure and urbanisation: concerns with the body and the valorisation of nature
The emergence and consolidation of leisure habits was also partly related to the new
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sensitivities triggered by the new organisation of the metropolis. As the demographic

rates increased, the initial enthusiasm gave way to the demonisation of the urban envi-
ronment. As studies such as Thomas’s (1988, p. 217) have shown, the triumph of the
new attitude towards nature was, in his words, ‘closely related to the growth of the
cities’ (see also Williams, 1989). The cities were then portrayed as a ‘nightmare of
crowds’, marked by a ‘daily life surrounded by torments’, assessed as unhealthy and
infected, compromised by dirty and polluted air. In the 1970s in Brazil the expression
‘urbicide’ appeared as a kind of euphemism to speak of urban life as something
pathological and harmful.
It was not uncommon, therefore, to represent the weekends and holidays as
moments in which an uncontrollable urge to ‘escape the city’ prevailed: ‘sociologists,
psychologists and urbanists tried to explain the reasons that led crowds of people to
leave the city as if getting rid of a burden’ (Veja, 15 November 1978, p. 55). In a few
years, a new concept of leisure had been established:

The idea of leisure, as it is usually thought of nowadays, suggests the necessity of

escaping from work, something terrible that crumbles man […]. It seems that a weekend
at the countryside or at the beach, or even better, sweet vacation, are suitable remedies
for those energies spent in the repetition of absolutely monotonous actions in factories
and offices. (Veja, 10 January 1975, p. 10)

In this context, it is possible to understand the growth of concerns with ‘physical and
mental health’. Meditation and Yoga lessons and other ‘spiritual treatments’ have
found good acceptance among the urban middle classes in Brazil. Similarly, exercis-
ing was becoming a popular leisure activity. The desire of ‘straightening the body’
was more commonly noted. Veja (2 December 1974) reported that:

Gymnastics, until now used as a complementary method for diets, is now practiced indis-
criminately by fat and thin, mainly as a way of moving their bodies, warped in the
vicious cycle created by life in big cities. (p. 50)

Between 1974 and 1979, it is estimated that the number of ‘fitness institutes and
centers’ went from a little more than a dozen to over 50: ‘The boom of sport and exer-
cise is also becoming a mass phenomenon. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians, in
short, realise that one of their biggest concerns, if not the biggest, is their own body’
(Veja, 3 October 1979, p. 51).
Another symptom of the same process was the popularisation of sports practised
in nature. A good example is the dissemination of sports such as surfing and
mountaineering among middle-class youth in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Florianópo-
lis and Curitiba (Dias, 2008). The emergence of such sports, according to current
 338 C. Dias and V. de Andrade Melo

interpretations by Brazilian scholars, has been treated as one of the most significant
changes in the sport field (Brandão, 2008; Dias, 2009a; Fortes, 2009). In fact, the
‘cult of the green’ grew in general, which was also noticeable in the emergence of
new trends, as in the valorisation of vegetarian restaurants and the spread of some
country practices. In 1966, for example, the Brazilian Camping Club, a national
network of sites for the practice of camping, was created. Four years later, the initia-
tive already registered more than 120 clubs scattered across the country. The camp-
sites were definitively established as a privileged space for leisure. As defined by
Veja, it was a place:
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With green area suitable for recreation, rest and tourism, with all the resources of the
comfort of home […] where adults and kids are free from the suffocating lack of space
of apartments, the irritating concrete landscape, the neuroticizing rush, the noise and the
polluted air. (8 January 1969, p. 49)

In order to meet the rapid growth of a new urban demand of people eager for a
‘time in the country’, the number of farm hotels also grew. In this scenario, it is under-
stood why the Brazilian Tourism Agency, founded in 1966, created in the 1970s a
‘pioneer planned leisure centre which aims at preventing the degradation of the wild
environment by the growing number of tourists, increasingly attracted to life in touch
with nature’ (Veja, 26 October 1977, p. 63). The enthusiasm for the quest of nature
was not only evident by its search outside the city on weekends and holidays. Initia-
tives to bring it inside the homes also grew. The idea that ‘plotted plants in houses and
apartments help face the concrete scenery of the city’ (Veja, 18 August 1976, p. 75)
was a common understanding. Gardening became a valued hobby.
If the new configuration of the city influenced the habits of leisure, the opposite
could also be observed. The expectations regarding the use of free time had an impact
on the directions of urban planning. The availability of suitable spaces for recreation
gradually began to be regarded as a problem, a need and an urgency. As a result, the
growth of the city had somehow to consider the new desires of entertainment and
contact with nature.
The construction industry started contemplating the existence of leisure facilities,
parks and gardens in their plans for middle-class housing, benefits that were a strong
element in the valorisation of the project. In the 1960s and the 1970s, residential areas
of restricted access, called ‘condominiums’, appeared across the country, with private
security and an abundance of services, including a recreational infrastructure. In Rio
de Janeiro, with the severe reduction in real estate projects in the most prestigious resi-
dential areas (the Zona Sul – or South Zone – where the world famous beaches of
Copacabana and Ipanema are located), the direction of urban expansion turned to
regions such as Barra da Tijuca, which had then a sparsely occupied shore and more
abundant nature.4 The first major condominiums of the city were built in this area:
Nova Ipanema (New Ipanema) and Novo Leblon (New Leblon). In São Paulo, the
district Chácara Flora was created, presented as ‘a small paradise inside the capital’,
able to offer ‘several services and options of leisure and entertainment to its residents’
(Ponciano, 2001, p. 45). Granja Viana, similarly, was described as ‘a borough with
high standard homes, schools and commercial centers […] offering the green and
quiet of the 18,000 acres of the reserve forest of Horto Florestal’ (Leitão, 1999, p. 85).
The city of Recife, Pernambuco, was also expanding, always seeking the amenities
of life by the sea and of the contact with nature (Veja, 17 February 1976). In Salvador,
Bahia, architect Válter Gordilho made remarks about a similar phenomenon:
 Leisure Studies 339

The upper classes seek out new environments, where the presence of vegetation and
improved environmental conditions favor the choice of new options. Hence the emer-
gence of allotments such as in Horto Florestal, Jardim das Bolandeiras and Caminho das
Árvores. (cited in Leitão, 1999, p. 85)

It was, therefore, a nationwide dynamic, as shown by a report in Veja:

Nowadays, in the major Brazilian cities, nothing is announced in the real estate pages but
land plots located several kilometers from the city center, where the Brazilian urban man
may discover ancient novelties, such as the sun (‘the sunset, remember?’ says an adver-
tisement of a real estate agency in São Paulo). (Veja, 28 August 1974, p. 52)
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To sum up, the growth of Brazilian cities between the 1950s and the 1970s was
certainly one of the factors, although not the only one, responsible for the blooming
of a new sensitivity towards nature, which, by its turn, was followed by new ways of
enjoying free time. Likewise, those new ‘needs’ influenced the course of urbanisation.
Actually, such tendencies did exist beforehand. Their genesis, even in Brazil, may
be identified as early as the eighteenth century, when the valorisation of nature as a
scenic and landscaping artefact was articulated with the modern process of urbanisa-
tion and with the creation of symbols of modernity (Dias, 2009b). The point is that,
for the reasons we tried to demonstrate, this process seems to have been intensified in
the second half of the twentieth century, in proportions never seen before in Brazilian
history.

Leisure and urbanisation: governmental concerns

Within the set of changes that marked Brazil between the 1950s and the 1970s, the
government implementation of measures in order to intervene in the organisation of
the cities may be noticed. Among those actions, some sought to preserve or build sites
for leisure. Public agencies, after all, had to deal with the fact that:

The big city is pushing Brazilians outside their homes – to run, ride their bicycles, work
out […]. In five years parks, beaches, gardens and avenues in the major Brazilian cities
have been taken by a legion of athletes of all ages, in growing numbers and decreasing
inhibition. (Veja, 3 October 1979, p. 51)

In Rio de Janeiro, the Parque Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (National Park of Rio de
Janeiro) was created in 1961. The park was expanded and renamed Parque Nacional
da Tijuca (National Park of Tijuca) in 1967, and is still considered the biggest urban
forest in the country and one of the biggest in the world (about 8300 acres). In 1965,
the Parque do Flamengo (Flamengo Park) was created, a vast arbored area by the sea
(1302 km2) equipped for recreational activities. In 1954, São Paulo opened a large
green area (1584 km2) destined for leisure: the Parque do Ibirapuera (Ibirapuera
Park). In 1969, the city hall scattered posters with flowers and invitations for recre-
ational practices throughout the city. The idea, according to announcements made at
the time, was to soften the landscape of the metropolis. In Belo Horizonte, in the early
1970s, a project that foresaw the construction of an artificial beach on the shore of the
Pampulha Lake was announced due to concerns with the problem of the recreation of
the masses. In 1974, the Department of Parks and Gardens planted over 400,000 tree
seedlings throughout the city, in addition to planning three large squares that could be
used for the leisure of the population.
 340 C. Dias and V. de Andrade Melo

Under the federal government, laws were created in order to encourage and even
force unions and labour associations to organise leisure activities to their affiliates and
employees. In 1970, Decree No. 67277, among other measures, offered financial
loans to unions for the construction, renovation or acquisition of sites for summer
camps, sport fields or recreational clubs. In 1976, Law No. 6836 required them to
devote part of their revenue to the creation of libraries and recreational centres
(Santana, 1992, p. 29). In addition to legislative action, other measures would be
taken. In 1973, the Second National Development Plan devoted much attention to
matters of urban planning.5 Because of its legal propositions, departments, commis-
sions and specialised agencies were created in order to deal with ‘city issues’ in nine
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regions in Brazil: Belém, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre, Recife,
Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo. As a continuation of these actions, the ‘First
Meeting of Metropolitan Areas’ was held in Rio de Janeiro in the same year. In July
1974, the ‘National Commission of Metropolitan Regions and Urban Policy’ was
created with the objective of ‘making life possible in the cities’ (Veja, 12 June 1974,
p. 69). In the same year, the ‘National Symposium on Urban Health’ was held in São
Paulo.
In different ways, each of these actions generated serious debates about the role of
leisure as a vehicle for promoting the quality of life of the population in big cities, as
well as the lack of space and opportunities for appropriate use of free time. Through-
out the 1970s, the organisation of activities such as bike rides and closing of public
areas to traffic on weekends, known as ‘the streets of leisure’, became more frequent.
Following the ‘Move’ (Mexa-se) campaign, the federal government launched the
programme ‘sports for all’. Part of the press treated such initiatives as ‘proof of love
for leisure’, highlighting that people ‘are still receptive to the growing official initia-
tives in the area’ (Veja, 5 October 1977, p. 72). Initiatives within public health policies
were also devised, expressing concerns with the ‘diseases of development’. In August
1978, the University of São Paulo held a ‘Seminar on Public Health in Metropolitan
Areas’. On that occasion, when the effects of pollution and violence were being
discussed, depression began being treated as an epidemic, while leisure was intro-
duced as a potential antidote.
Finally, during the 1970s, leisure was considered an important tool for the ‘re-
humanisation’ of urban life, finding its place in the list of public concerns. The
‘National Seminar on Leisure’, held in Curitiba in November, 1974, was seen as
responsible for taking the issue of quality of life in the big cities to the main list of
official concerns. With the presence of architects, urban planners, sociologists, econ-
omists and social workers, the event was rated as a ‘crusade in favor of a new, more
humane and more appealing face to big cities, against a universe of boredom,
cultural frustration and despair that stalk their inhabitants’ (Veja, 4 December 1974,
p. 54). In 1975, another congress was held, this time in Rio de Janeiro: the ‘First
Meeting on Leisure, Culture, Recreation and Physical Education’. At the same time,
books about leisure began being published in Brazil, as Lazer no planejamento
urbano (Leisure in urban planning), by Medeiros (1971), one of the pioneers both in
the reflection and in the institutional actions connected to the topic in Brazil, and the
translation of the works of Joffre Dumazedier,6 which would have much influence
on the constitution of leisure studies in Brazil (Melo, 2008). Since the late 1950s, the
theme was being treated sporadically in some works, such as Lazer operário
(Worker’s leisure) by the sociologist Ferreira (1959) that intended to explicitly ‘open
up perspectives to the planning of leisure within the social organisation of cities’
 Leisure Studies 341

(p. 17). In the 1970s, the theme started being debated more systematically in
Brazilian universities, just as it would continue filling gaps in government adminis-
tration. The relationship between the use of free time and the urban issue would not
leave the political, social and academic agendas.

Conclusion
US urban sociologist Park (1925, p. 2) stated that ‘the city is not only a geographical
unit’, i.e., it is more than the sum of its streets, buildings and railways. It is more than
a huddle of individuals and conveniences. It is more than the mere constellation of
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institutions and administrative devices. The city is also a state of mind, a set of
customs, feelings and attitudes. Thus, ‘understanding the city means thinking its urban
and territorial networks and also seeing it as an observatory for human relations’
(Lepetit, 2001. p. 15). Therefore, the structuring of urban spaces should also be under-
stood in light of the several social mechanisms that have acted in the construction and
assimilation of new habits. The way the urbanisation process developed is deeply
related to the life styles of the population. Both dimensions answer to a same condition
of possibility: the city’s cultural practices and physical shape are mutually influencing
each other, dramatising and materialising a comprehensive set of changes.
These interfaces show how the structure of the cities is able to influence, to some
extent, people’s expectations concerning the enjoyment of their leisure time. In the
same way, the desires and expectations regarding leisure are also capable of contrib-
uting to consolidating a complex system of representations that will gradually require
the edification of new spaces in the city, able to fulfil the demands posed by those new
habits. From this perspective, the study of the relations between space and culture can
expand, even heuristically, the intelligibility of both the urban and leisure phenomena.
In order to think of the city in its complexity, one must look simultaneously to the
place and to the people, to space, but also to the actors within it. That is why an inves-
tigation into the relations between the process of urbanisation and the formation of
certain leisure habits, within recent Brazilian history, seemed productive to us. City
plans and other political projections aside, the configuration of a city also consists of
the everyday uses to which each of its structures are submitted. And certainly, as we
have tried to show, the ways that the men and women who occupied those spaces used
to enjoy their free time was an important element in the production of meaning and
re-appropriation of this complex we call the city.

Notes
1. Juscelino Kubitschek was the President of Brazil from 1956 to 1961. His government was
marked by the construction of Brasília, which since 1960 has been the capital city of Brazil,
and by obsessive ideas about progress and development, summarised in the motto
cinquenta anos em cinco (‘fifty years in five’).
2. The production of steel began in Brazil in 1946, with the opening of the Companhia
Siderúrgica Nacional (National Steel Company). The exploration of oil began its first steps
in 1938, when President Getúlio Vargas (1930–1945 and 1951–1954) created the Conselho
Nacional do Petróleo (National Petroleum Council). In 1951, with the creation of
Petrobrás, the government monopoly in this area was made official.
3. Brazil was under a military dictatorial regime between 1964 and 1985, a period which was
marked by the suppression of democratic principles and the use of violence in the
repression of opponents.
4. The location for many of the events scheduled for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
 342 C. Dias and V. de Andrade Melo

5. The National Development Plans, created during the military dictatorship (1964–1985),
provided a set of actions intended to improve the functioning of sectors seen as strategic
for the Brazilian economy.
6. The first work of Dumazedier translated in Brazil was Lazer e Cultura Popular (Vers une
civilisation du loisir?), published in 1973.

Notes on contributors
Cleber Dias is professor at Faculdade de Educação Física at Universidade Federal de Goiás,
where he is engaged in leisure and sport research in Brazil. He is editor of Pensar a Prática –
Revista and author of Urbanidades da natureza and Entre o mar e a montanha.
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Victor de Andrade Melo is professor of the postgraduate program in comparative history at

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and of the postgraduate program in leisure at Federal
University of Minas Gerais. He is the coordinator of ‘Sport’: Laboratory of History of Sport
and Leisure. He holds a doctorate in physical education and has pursued postdoctoral studies
in cultural studies and social history.

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