SOCIO-SPATIAL DIFFERENTIATION

Abstract

This paper discusses what socio-spatial differentiation actually means; it deals with questions that disturb the geographical imagination. Cities are loci of social conflict because they constitute contradictory spaces par excellence, spaces where resistances that express different interests are clearly evident. Our main challenge is to identify the similarities and differences of the social groups that produce and consume the city in order to understand, urban contradictions notwithstanding, what gives sense and animation to the city’s differentiated arrangement. The rescue of the  discursive tenor of the inability of geography to overcome this analytical shortcoming brings to light the discourse of renowned geographers and points to the need of a better dialogue with professionals of the other human sciences.