Public Space and its Discontents. Informality and Urban Conflict

Abstract

Considering the critical positions regarding the normative ideal of public space, the objective of this special number and its introduction is to point out the central contradictions within the concept of public space as spatially placed ideology, which have transformed the streets into allegedly pacified, sanitized territories. We have developed this critical conception of public space through certain practices that, defined as “informal”, are crucial to understand the necessarily conflictive nature of what is urban, and that a notion as “public space” tries to hide or disguise as consensus.