MICRO TERRITORIES AND SEGREGATION IN PUBLIC SPACE OF CONTEMPORARY CITY

Abstract

This article discusses the relations between urban micro territories and the strategies of socio-spatial appropriation of public space in contemporary city, seeking to explain the symbolic contents of segregationist type manifested through the establishment of plastic and mobile territories of different social groups, classes and class fractions. These issues are analyzed from concrete examples in Paris and Salvador that will spell out the effects of class (segmentation) and mass (crosscutting) in the processes of appropriation of beaches and parks in an urban/metropolitan context. On the other hand, the operationalization of territory and public space concepts in the analysis of the presented examples shows that the barriers/limits that are established among the different territories are the result of a dialectic between cultural and economic capital that will condition segmentation/segregation processes in public space of contemporary city revealing "identities" based on modes of consumption of/in space.