APROXIMACIÓN A LOS PROCESOS SOCIOESPACIALES EN LAS CIUDADES CONTEMPORÁNEAS

ESPACIO PÚBLICO Y VIDA POLÍTICA

Abstract

In this article, we will develop an approach to the great and increasing number of sociospatial processes which are taking place in contemporary cities. Although we know the risk this general, inclusive approach may involve and be aware of the reductions we will be forced to impose to these problems, we have decided to assume it as an opening to this Congress debate about the extreme processes in the constitution of the city. We will start from two premises: the first one is, as Doreen Massey states, places are processes, that is to say, social interactions to which these processes are joined; and that, therefore, to speak about extreme processes is to speak about extreme places. The second is that crisis and emergence are only two extreme ways of perceiving those sociospatial processes which our cities are developing in many parts of the world; two extreme faces of the same way of production and consumerism of space and time that we citizens are suffering or enjoying. In the first part of our article, we will approach these two faces – the desperate and distressing one caused by the crisis and the kind and optimist one caused by emergence – agreeing with the categorization that the Argentinian philosopher, Nora Rabotnikof, establishes to explain what she understands as public space: that difficult, troubled place but ideally belonging to everybody. In the second part, we will focus on those social extreme situations which people live in the city when the public urban space turns into the place where urban demonstrations take place and where political life is shown unequivocally.