No. 05 (1999): Urban advantages and competitiviness between cities

 The new ideas that are being developed about the role that the city must fulfill in our present society, referring especially to the European city and partly to the American city, are also adopting very involved with the spatial expression of specific propagandistic aspects. These aspects serve to show, by way of the architectural project, the economic possibilities of the newly defined urban spaces. It must be understand, in that sense, that economy –which can be developed in the context of a concrete urban space—is done as long as said context results attractive, both from projected formal quality concerns as well as that which gathers, in that proposed special context, the correct environment, conditions for cultural production, possibilities for human development, quality of life, etc.

The thought process, therefore, is inserted in a spatial context where very specific conditions of class prevail in order to be able to claim the new economic activity boosted by the environment in which it takes place. The qualitative definition of the city, or rather, the image that it must show to outsiders, constitutes, in this sense, one of the clearest goals for current Urban Planning.

The University Institute for Urban research wishes to join the aforementioned debate betting, in short, for revisiting the most rigorous principles that have formed the practice of Urban Planning in the last century. It goes without saying that we are referring to the practice that has understood the city, and the territory, as geographic entities where, in order to proceed to their “urban organization”, it is required to consider the spatial scope where the basic principles of freedom and democracy are being developed, while obviating those that promote inequality and exclusion.