Análise do potencial territorial de Rio do Sul - SC com base nas abordagens do Design Sistêmico e do Branding para os territórios

Abstract

Design, when operating within productive, social, and cultural systems, fosters interdependence, resilience, and self-generation, thereby generating benefits for the context in which it is embedded. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the territorial potentialities of the city of Rio do Sul (Santa Catarina, Brazil) through the articulation of Systemic Design, Design for Territories, and Territorial Branding, seeking to understand how these approaches may contribute to the sustainable, symbolic, and identity-based development of the locality. The adopted methodology is qualitative and exploratory in nature, combining a documentary review based on secondary data with a bibliographic review of the guiding themes. As a strategy for a systemic reading of the territory, two tools drawn from the reviewed literature were applied: the holistic diagnosis and the value star. The former resulted in the development of a gigamap, a visual resource that enabled the identification of the main systems operating in the city, including two wicked problems. Complementarily, the latter tool, proposed by Krucken (2013), was employed to map the territory’s key attributes. The results indicate that Rio do Sul has an industrial core with potential for enhanced identity projection through branding strategies, and that local values manifest in a complementary manner, allowing for reorganization through systemic approaches. As a continuation, the study suggests the development of field research focused on listening to the population, in order to strengthen coherence between perceived identity and the institutional image of the territory.