Hábitat y tiempo: elementos urbanos para la convivencia

Abstract

Each urban society develops patterns of distribution of time and space that allow attend to the different human needs. The urban shape defines to a large degree, how people inhabit the territory. This is most evident at neighborhood level because it is the place where the people spend more time in their everyday life and activities overlap in time and space dimension. The migration dynamics that has occurred in last years has caused demographic, social and economic deep transformations in our cities. This paper develops part of an investigation about how the arrival of immigrants has changed the scenario for coexistence in the neighborhoods. The space-time dimension is a key element in the integration of the immigrant population, because the neighborhood, as everyday relationship environment, articulates the lives of people and opens ways to coexistence. The research was carried out on a broad base of study of more of 9 neighborhoods in Barcelona with a percentage of immigrant population over the average of the province of Barcelona (14.62 %) and their respective cities. The approach to social and urban reality of each area was made from the application of qualitative methodologies, which has consisted in an extensive collection of primary data through participant observation and in-depth interviews. Moreover, have been developed graphical tools that incorporate spatial dimension to facilitate analysis of information.