Contenido
Las ciudades aportan bienestar colectivo, y desde la sociología, se considera a las ciudades como el lugar para satisfacer las necesidades básicas de sus habitantes, así como el lugar donde se encuentran bienes públicos esenciales[7].
Todos los elementos de la ciudad, como los espacios públicos, calles, edificios y plazas tienen un por qué y son esenciales para determinar algunos ámbitos como lo social, la economía, política y cultura de las ciudades. Los habitantes también determinan y moldean a la ciudad, ya que los espacios de la ciudad se vuelven un punto de encuentro, se interpretan los símbolos y da lugar a un significado de la ciudad subjetivo, lo que va originando la biografía de la ciudad. Cada persona que entra y sale, que habita 1,2 o 30 años en ese espacio, se vuelve parte de la biografía de la ciudad.
El diseño y estructura de la ciudad y sus espacios públicos son muy relevantes para lograr espacios y encuentros de calidad. Por ejemplo, el tamaño de las calles, de las aceras y/o banquetas para caminar, los espacios verdes y la cantidad de árboles (que son conocidos como el pulmón de la ciudad), van a determinar el tipo de relación de sus habitantes, si las aceras son sólo para deambular de un lugar a otro o si serán puntos de encuentro (como el hecho de que haya bancas para sentarse, sombra, etc.), se puede ver más de esto en “Carne y piedra”, de Richard Sennet.[8].
urban models
Urban planning must take into account its physical and symbolic structure. Short corridors will facilitate the access of individuals to spaces, regardless of cultural or social differences. The borders that delimit areas not only have the capacity to establish an inside and an outside, but in different places and contexts the borders will have the possibility of linking one place with another. Without this quality, space tends to fragment; however, they do have a function that links and contributes to the unity of the community.
All this includes urban security. An example is the circulation routes, these will not only have one function, but will also allow a variety of units to move in these spaces. Bicycles, pedestrians and cars will have the possibility of traveling coexisting with other entities. This contributes to the dynamics that lubricate social life and space. Mixed traffic serves to share traffic between groups, thus achieving an adequate relationship and balance.
The sustainable city involves urban planning, resources, individuals and social organization to create an ecosystem of groups, which are free to appropriate space and coexist. These groups circulate and coexist to exercise their citizenship in the most optimal way. They have equal opportunities for social life and mobility, so everyone benefits. This not only has an impact on the organization of the city, but also on the life models of individuals, people acquire better habits, improve the ties between people and the community, in addition to having the capacity for free expression. This improves both the quality of urban life and the quality of life of individuals.
There are two antagonistic models that generalize urban models at first glance: the diffuse city model and the compact city model.
Starting with the diffuse city, it is characterized by having the functions of its territory in a dispersed way, which is based on a base that cannot sustain itself, since the use of resources and time is exorbitant, and let us remember that some of those resources are limited. Therefore, in the new urban designs, which are based on this model, the fact that it tends towards individualism is questioned, since the neighborhoods are now residential and gives rise to exclusion, returning to the home as the only social space. There are different characteristics of the diffuse city, one of them is the territorial organization, which has its main link with the uses given to the area, with the intention of making economic activities and geographical distribution efficient. This is reflected in the fact that each area is separated from another, so these divisions imply considerable separations. Places such as universities, industrial areas, residences and businesses, being separated, imply a need for mobility for individuals. The mechanisms to move you from one place to another have to use dense roads and/or roads. It is important to mention that as the population grows, so do the streets, making proper strategic organization impossible. Transportation mechanisms play a very important role in the diffuse city, since although they manage to move you from one place to another, given the poor organization and rapid growth of the city, very dense traffic is caused, also involving the issue of energy. The only way to solve these problems is to increasingly expand the road network and increase the speed of traffic to avoid stagnation, but even so the problem of pollution is not solved (Rueda, 2002).
The uncontrolled growth itself will cause there to be no stability in its conformation. Resources, time and organization are vulnerable and unstable, however, the only thing that is safe is the grouping of residential sectors. While the peripheries are segregated. All these trends make it a not very viable option for a city, since they are exposed in terms of organization, contacts between people, energy use, regulations and communications.
On the other hand, there is the compact city and it is visually characterized by having a density of buildings, a structure like what we call “blocks (urbanism)”), since the streets are parallel vertically and horizontally (like a grid). Unlike the diffuse city, in the compact city we see greater accessibility for pedestrians, in the diffuse city the distances are longer and therefore the use of automobiles is greater. Considering the case of the compact city, it is said that several urban planning specialists took on the task of finding a better form of organization. The economy in urban systems has caused poor distribution, organization and uses of spaces, causing a great environmental impact and stress, all due to the separation of functions and space. This is why it is necessary to find a viable and sustainable option to shape a city.
To solve all these problems, a compact city aims to create spaces so that people can walk, creating more natural areas and spaces. In addition, it locates the areas in such a way that there are no great distances between different sectors, locating a wide range of commercial spaces, industry, green areas, etc., so that individuals can have better access to these sites.
This is the name given to the city that is made up of “12 layers”, which are 12 urban realities that come together and give rise to the puff pastry city. These 12 cities formed intertwined are: the city of discipline, the planned city, the posthistorical city, the global city, the dual city, the city of spectacle, the sustainable city, the city as nature, the city of bodies, the lived city, the cybercity and the chip city.[9].
In this section we will only expand on some of them, which are the main ones.
This model is characterized by the specialization of work, creating a reorganization based on economic activity, which was dedicated to dividing three sectors by production area: industrial, office work and the financial sector. This causes a division between the center and the periphery of the city, so the participation of the inhabitants is more concentrated in the center and the periphery is more excluded, giving rise to new forms of organization.
As there are new forms of organization in the different urban models, the dual city is no exception with its segregations; this model is characterized by the emphasis on social inequalities. Here it denotes an interesting social mobility, the middle class moves to the upper class as a result of economic activities with the intention of a reorganization, but the middle class decreases and the lower class has greater difficulty in getting out of its inequality. This constitutes gentrification, a concept that is taken up in another section, which means that there are areas of heritage that are more attractive to the middle class and makes them with greater purchasing power, moving to the upper class.[9].
In a globalized world where consumerism exists, this urban model is created that refers to the artificial and becomes a reality for people. A clear example of this is Disneyland or Las Vegas, where they are forced to create attractive economic and consumer activities in order to continue developing. These places are usually attractive for multinationals, so it is a constant attempt to enter the global economy.
Finally, due to all the previous models that have to do with the global, consumerism, exploitation of resources, etc. This sustainable model is considered a necessity for cities to take care of our planet, with the intention of regulating human activities, energy use, production, which is why this model opposes the global city and the spectacle.[9].
Contemporary theories
The city is in a constant state of transformation according to the changes in the society that inhabits it; three phases have been identified that it has gone through in different historical periods, which have been studied within the social sciences.[10].
Sociology began to consolidate in the middle of the century, but it took a few decades for the city to be seen as an object of study, thus creating urban sociology. It was during modernization that interest arose in studying the characteristic phenomena of this era, which occurred mainly in the so-called metropolis.[10].
Throughout this period, two aspects derived from Enlightenment can be distinguished that focused on the study of the city, one positivist and the other Marxist. The first was promoted by social reformers, who had a great approach to the most negative aspects of the city, such as poverty and growing inequalities, which is why they pointed out that focusing attention on these problems would motivate the State to create social reforms that would solve them.[10].
While the second had a completely different vision, it had a first romantic phase, in which a synthesis between culture and civilization was proposed, finding a balance between nostalgia for the medieval community and the new monopolistic interests through a historical vision; and a second Enlightenment phase, promoted by Georg Simmel, who analyzed the lifestyle of the metropolitan individual, characterized by constantly receiving stimuli from his environment and who was forced to respond to all of them with reason, leading him to a constant state of anguish. For his part, Max Weber, through historical analysis, suggested how class struggle was the foundation of the metropolis.[10].
After the Second World War, both sociological schools exchanged their approaches, the Anglo-Saxon school distanced itself from romanticism and adhered to Enlightenment, while the German school with Marxist ideology began to reject its tendency towards rationalization and began to adopt existentialist tendencies. During the era of the megalopolis, both found a common interest in the study of the peripheries.[10].
The so-called community studies") received the focus of attention during this phase, especially from the 1960s onwards when the demographic expansion of developing countries became noticeable, where megalopolises emerged and developed in a different way from those that had initially been studied in Europe, so new ways of analyzing this phenomenon were required. It was the Manchester School that proposed a solution with its method of "situational analysis", which consisted of seeing urban society as a set of autonomous systems, each of which They contributed to the same structure of tensions that the megalopolis consisted of, proposing the conflict as the main topic of study. The community studies continued to focus on working-class neighborhoods, ethnic communities and historical centers, with new topics of interest such as the displacement of the population in the neighborhoods and the new suburbs, where the middle class began to concentrate and which reinforced the problems of segregation in the city.[10].
Perceive the city
Not everything is merely quantitative or conceptual, there is this qualitative, subjective, analytical and descriptive side like sociology, which is why it is important to address how to perceive the city and not only take it as an isolated concept. There is a reading that has relevance in anthropology and sociology called “Non-places” by Marc Augé, which categorizes cities as a place or a non-place. The place is made up of 3 characteristics: a) they are identity-based, that is, they have something that makes them their own and defines them (for example, culture, region, among others), b) they are relational, since being a member implies the relationship with other members to develop together, c) they are historical, since, as an anthropological place, people spend their lives in that place which creates a history and a biography. As has been mentioned in other sections, the inhabitants shape the city.[11].
On the other hand, non-places are the complete opposite of the above, they are not identity-based, there is no relationship between people and therefore they do not create history. These places are dehumanized and become only passing through, to visit or a place to admire and enjoy. A place can become a non-place the moment it loses its customs, identity, etc.
Each person has their own image of the city, because we perceive, analyze and interpret what surrounds us from a subjective perspective and according to our experiences. From sociology, it is analyzed how human beings create images of their space, and this is how a person can see order in their disorder, this means that it can be easy for an individual to find things in their workspace (such as their desk) that a person outside the place and who considers that the place is in disorder. size, color, whether it is an open or closed place, sensation that the place inspired in you, you could relate it to some other place that is assimilated; However, another person could talk about the same place and only describe it as “a restaurant” or “the building on the corner”, that is where the abstraction of the image lies.
The habitus is a relevant concept of urban sociology, it maintains the dichotomy between the objective and the subjective. The concept of habitus derives from Bourdieu's social theory, with habitus being, according to this author: “a system of lasting dispositions that function as classification schemes to guide the evaluations, perceptions and actions of subjects.”
There are two important moments for the habitus: 1) the subjects internalize the social, 2) the process of internalizing promotes a structure of cultural practices and representations. These are processes that adhere to the social unconscious. Its dynamics allow us to share knowledge, as far as an education system is concerned. Likewise, this transmits differentiated habitus, since people are in different pedagogical contexts, with different institutional authorities.