Contemporary public space in the city of the 21st century; crisis or transformation?

Abstract

Objective

To analyze the role of shopping centers as public spaces in the contemporary city, that become, because of their appropriation, functions and meanings, in spaces that are representative of the leisure and recreation of modern life. The malls supplant the historical function of the traditional square and street to transform into places that represent the upper and middle classes’ utopia and aspirations; as well as the aspirations of a part of the less favored in their ascent project towards higher levels of the social scale; and they are constituted as islands of particular functions in the city’s context; unmistakable meaning of the contemporary city’s fragmentation, dispersion and specialization. The public spaces and the total structure of cities, the formal and functional codes of its identity are implicated nuclearly in the modern city’s process of modernizing transformation, phenomenon that allows its accomplishment under the influence of the XXI century’s construction scenarios.

Methodology

Using theoretical references from authors like Borja & Muxi (2003), Fuentes Gómez (2005) and Baudrillard (1978) and a partaker observation and analysis, these architectural structures are studied. These places are designed not to be seen and admired from the outside, but to be enjoyed inwardly; exclusiveness spaces for people that identify not as citizens, but as consumers.

Conclusions

This investigation is targeted towards specialists and professionals that carry out urban studies, and specifically analysis of these public spaces that convert in a species of autonomous nodes, if their link with the urban structure is analyzed; but if we observe their uses and meanings, they become independent spaces of civic life that contribute to the dispersion and individualized concentration that confirm the characteristics of the contemporary city.

Originality

The characterization of shopping centers (spaces specializing in leisure and consumption) as public spaces of the contemporary society leads us to confirm how the public space has positioned itself as a relevant issue in the current debates of the city.