No. 09 (2005): The Latin American city: Beyond the grid
The problems that affect the American City are so different from those of the European City, that they imply the necessary adoption of specific and precise positions when it comes to their study, and this is an attitude that we must understand even if, on a first approach, it may seem strange to ours methods of analysis. These studies, in a word, are more involved on social, economic and political issues, less than in others of a special type, in the “close spaces” rather than the European studies where, increasingly, the aesthetic-monumental presuppositions prevail, with which it’s expected to dismantle the historical rigors on the Urbanism field.
It seems, in this sense, as if everything was done in Europe, and everything to be done in America, as if the great urban-territorial contradictions are only conveyed on the American geographies. Everything is thought, in America, from social, economical and political points of view, even the city and the territory, while in Europe such approaches have been overcome, confident, as we are, that our “democratic level” allows us to perfect, neither change nor challenge, social constructions on the framework of “well-being” already achieved. Different positions that also show themselves, on the scientific plane.
