Mobile moments. Mobile places and the new building of public space

Abstract

In the current globalisation process, some feel that places have lost their distinctiveness and become unified spaces lacking essence. However, it is thanks to this current process of globalisation and the way in which each society and city interacts with it locally and the inevitable daily mobility of urban inhabitants in contemporary cities that it has become possible to rethink the notion of public space based on a new understanding of place. Place takes on new meaning when linked to the inexorable shift from fixed space with meaning, to a mobile space with multiple and simultaneous meanings. This paper delves into thereconceptualisation of place by introducing the idea of mobile places within the practice of urban daily mobility. This is examined through an ethnographic account of mobile place-making accompanied by photographic images that show the appropriation of times and spaces on the move by urban dwellers in Santiago. The research is based on ethnographic work of urban travellers in the city of Santiago within the FONDECYT Research Project No.1090198 “Urban Daily Mobility and Social Exclusion in Santiago de Chile".