The urban struggle to regain and redefine the public space in Latin America

Abstract

Since its inception in ancient Greece, public space has played a key role in the politics and democracy of cities. Its role has been degraded in post-modernity, and reached its deepest crisis in the full maturity of the post-Fordist system (from 1990 onwards). This economic and representation depression, as well as institutional legitimacy, that States are experiencing, have promoted the emergence and resurgence of different social movements that flood cities globally. Here is where the concern of the Frente Urbano Amparo Poch y Gascón collective lies, formed by the authors, to recognize and characterize, from a socio-urban logic, these manifestations and the sustained occupation that public spaces have experienced in different Latin American cities during the last decade. This research, framed within the Virtual Latin American Meeting, Utopías Líquidas, is proposed starting from a mixed methodology of collective mapping, recognizing public spaces, and characterizing their occupation exercised by Latin American social movements, in the dispute to redefine them and regain their political character, and thus value the different Latin American social movements and their struggles, in an act that encourages resistance and solidarity.