City and Democracy: Environment, Heritage and Public Space

Abstract

In the current context of debate over these entities that we have become accustomed to call cities, their problematization is undergoing a deep analytical reformulation. No doubt the crisis of explanatory paradigms, also about the so-called "urban issue", will be the source of this much needed reformulation. They are, above all, transformations of social and urban morphologies, resulting from significant changes in the economic framework, urban lifestyles and modes of urban governance, which imply a constant questioning of the respective analytical approaches. Therefore, the present essay begins by positioning the city as a "project", a project that is naturally "under construction", and then attempts to make a critical discussion about the cultural dimension and the urban condition of this very project. Based on this framework, three fundamental themes - urban environment, urban heritage and public space - seem to justify a particular "look" and a specific problematization about these cities, our contemporaries. While, of course, this is not a "new theory", this analytical framework seeks to support a set of reflections on what has been termed "urban citizenship", and from there open up for the debate about democracy in/of the city.