In 2000, Mexico promoted a process of land deregulation that facilitated a massive housing policy aimed at the working classes. This strategy sought profit and large gains, encouraging construction companies to acquire cheap land on the urban peripheries, much of it on socially owned land. A study was conducted on the Los Angeles subdivision in the city of Mazatlan, Mexico, using a mixed methodology based on cartography, consultation of the National Agrarian Registry, semi-structured interviews with key informants from the El Castillo ejido and residents of the subdivision, as well as field observation. The evidence indicates that the construction of the development was solely motivated by urban extractivism, resulting in the abandonment of a large part of the housing due to its location, poor access to public services, and problems of insecurity and urban mobility.
This article analyzes mining as an aesthetic and temporal phenomenon in the context of the Anthropocene, proposing a "critical aesthetics" that articulates the industrial sublime, geological temporality, and socio-environmental responsibility. Drawing on Brazilian empirical cases, such as the former Cumbe mine in Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais) and the processes resulting from the collapse of the Fund & atilde;o dam in Mariana (Minas Gerais), the text examines how mined landscapes evoke ambiguous aesthetic experiences situated between technical magnitude and environmental transformation. The theoretical framework engages with the philosophy of the Anthropocene, phenomenology, and contemporary artistic practices that re-signify the vestiges of extraction. The central argument maintains that recognizing the aesthetic dimension of mining does not entail naturalizing its impacts, but rather creating the conditions for a sensitive analysis that integrates memory and intergenerational responsibility in relation to the governance of Earth's resources.
In Argentina, building on innovation and experimental projects, distributed generation increases as collective initiatives-known by the names of community, cooperative or collaborative energy-, multiply. They are led by citizens or local institutions that leverage photovoltaic technology and regulatory changes. Pampean territories, pioneers in the development of pilot projects, introduced socio-technical changes that would lead to national legislation. This paper aims to reflect on the emergence of collective photovoltaic energy initiatives, tracing the trajectory of distributed generation in Argentina, focusing on the provinces of Buenos Aires, C & oacute;rdoba and Santa Fe, which are key to this process. Local photovoltaic generation projects, with the participation of multiple stakeholders, are studied. The methodology was based on field observation and interviews with key informants. The analysis of the initiatives made it possible to group them into different types, considering: their main actors, the role of the community, geographical proximity and shared interests. Progressively, local, community and territorial energy initiatives emerge in the Pampean photovoltaic trajectory.
In an international context of interest and concern for the problems of malnutrition affecting the working classes in the rural world, this work analyses, from the perspective of the hygienists, the diagnosis of the nutritional situation and its consequences for the health of the Castilian day labourer classes in the first decades of the 20th century. It was the chronic fatigue caused by the harsh conditions of agricultural activities, aggravated by misery and malnutrition, which explained the high incidence of infectious diseases of social aetiology among the day labourer class. In the context of the socio-economic diversification of health and disease problems resulting from poor nutrition, it was women and children who were most affected. In order to solve the food problem of agricultural workers and their families, socio-economic changes were required, as well as public policies of agricultural modernisation that would improve the living conditions and the hygienic culture of the day labourer classes.
The case to be analyzed corresponds to a conflict linked to the expansion of tourism /real estate in Chapadmalal, Mar del Plata (Argentina). In the 1990s, a beach resort was built on a Fiscal Tourist Unit (UTF) in Chapadmalal, effectively closing off public access. Asynchronously, in 2020, a citizens' assembly began to contest access and use of the area. The theoretical and methodological framework is that proposed by Mele (2016) for analyzing the social productivity of proximity conflicts. The construction of a case study and triangulation of sources are used to account for a territoriality that emerges from the conflict and seeks to reclaim the UTF space for public use through a territorialization project that incorporates the municipal reserve zoning, a process marked by administrative appeals and legal disputes.
This article delves into Robert Ezra Park's contributions to communication. It has been noted Park's pioneering approach on various fronts of 20th-century social research: his studies of news anticipated the systemic professional approach, his studies of newspapers anticipated professional theories due to their protoethnographic approach, and his theories of communication and society are in themselves a unique phenomenon that connects with the ecology and with studies of urban space connected to the symbolic universe. We trace early innovative concepts that this author used in his analyses (those of the "universe of discourse" and "frame of reference" among others), which shed light on the universe of ideas and conceptual affiliations of the Chicago School with the European schools of the time. Park's influence is both an influence on Park and an influence of Park, as his work captures intertwined threads of a conceptual tradition, now consolidated but little known in communication studies.
The article explores the criminological work carried out by Ernest Burgess in connection with the Chicago School, either directly in his studies on juvenile delinquency or recidivism, or indirectly through the support he showed to several of his collaborators, as can be seen in the forewords or reviews he wrote. Although his contribution is diverse and does not follow a single pattern, combining qualitative research based on case studies with quantitative research aimed at forecasting, it is the impact of the latter, as well as the controversies they sparked, that has been highlighted by analysts. To this end, the background to the use of statistics for crime prediction is reviewed and, finally, Burgess's place in the field of contemporary actuarial criminological analysis is established.
The safeguarding of built heritage*by civil society is a significant phenomenon in contemporary society. The safeguarding of built heritage by civil society is a significant phenomenon in contemporary society, the study of which serves as a valuable tool for exploring how social meanings are constructed around heritage assets and how these become a field of both symbolic and material contestation. Territorial management and urban transformation processes emerge as key factors in heritage activism, which is grounded in the exercise of the rights to the city and to heritage. In this context, conservationism becomes a form of collective expression linked to the right to inhabit, claim, and ascribe meaning to the built environment. The article presents a brief theoretical framework outlining the key conceptual foundations of the topic. Next, two case studies are presented: the campaign to defend the fishing shacks of La Creu in L'Escala, and the movement to safeguard the railway colony of Sant Vicen & ccedil; de Calders. The analysis of these experiences provides valuable insights into the understanding of this phenomenon in Catalonia.
This paper quantifies and analyses the evolution of the socio-spatial segregation of the foreign population in Comodoro Rivadavia, an oil city in Argentine Patagonia. It uses census data from 2010 and 2022 and applies global and local spatial autocorrelation techniques (Moran's I and LISA) to characterise the concentration patterns of three significant migrant groups: Chileans, Bolivians, and Paraguayans. The results show that the Chilean population maintains a historically high level of segregation, whereas Bolivians and Paraguayans exhibit an increase in their concentration over the last decade, particularly pronounced in the former case. The local analysis identifies clusters of high and low concentration that reveal the persistence and strengthening of residential segregation. These findings contribute to understanding urban transformations in contexts shaped by oil-industry dynamics and migration processes.
Granada's Ecomarket is a direct market that follows agro-ecological principles, framed within the so-called Alternative Food Networks. Since it is held in urban areas, it constitutes a material and symbolic link between the countryside and the city. Technically, its celebration implies a temporary appropriation of urban public space oriented towards consumption, like many others; although this is an alternative consumption, based on the quality and proximity of the products and on trust between producers and consumers. The research delves deeper into these distinctive characteristics by conducting a case study using observation techniques and interviews, exploring the impact of the Ecomarket celebration on the public space of the city of Granada, in its physical (material space) and social dimensions (in a symbolic dimension, linked to the idea of community).
In the early twentieth century, the city of Chicago became a social and urban laboratory. With the 1906 Plan of Chicago, it was consolidated as a central reference point of the City Beautiful movement, generating a debate on aesthetics and ethics in civic art. At the same time, the social settlements movement, led by Jane Addams, became a key instrument for studying improvements in the living conditions of the working classes. This movement, supported by the universities based in Chicago, offered women a significant-although still marginal - pathway to access and participate in urban planning. The case studies examined-Jane Addams, Harriet Vittum, Mary McDowell, Sophonisba Breckinridge, Edith Abbott, Florence Kelley, and Marion Mahony-show how these initiatives not only responded to the needs of their time but also remain relevant to contemporary urbanism.
Worldwide, millions of grassroots female recyclers work in precarious conditions, despite their work being considered essential for sustainability amid the environmental crisis. This research used a mixed-methods approach to understand the living and working conditions of women who recycle on the streets of Cuenca, Ecuador, and face serious labor and social problems. Recycling constitutes a survival activity that involves considerable physical wear, due to the length of the collection routes and the weight of the material transported. However, the social fabric that the recyclers build in their collection areas helps to reduce their vulnerability in the city. The study proposes urban strategies-applicable to cities with similar characteristics-to be implemented and monitored by decision-makers, with to integrate them into public policies.
The ghetto was incorporated into the collection of sociological topics with the pioneering study by Louis Wirth (The Ghetto, 1928), focusing on the Jewish enclave of Chicago. The concept has a dramatic thickness and semantic amplitude that makes its conceptualization difficult, in addition to the fact that its evolution and the problems identified in these areas give very particular profiles to this space. We intend to examine the scope and significance of the Wirth exposition on the ethnic segregation of immigrants and social exclusion in that global research program which was The City (1925). The purpose is to assess the extent to which it responds to its parameters, to the cross-debates in the intellectual and social environment of the Chicago School and to weigh its theoretical and methodological merits for socio-urban studies.
This paper proposes a critical review of the evolution of the concept of risk, from its etymological and epistemological roots to its contemporary institutionalization, with the aim of supporting the need to incorporate an ethics of risk as a constitutive dimension of analysis, evaluation, and management. It starts from the approach of the social construction of risk and a critique of technocratic models that reduce risk to a quantifiable, decontextualized, and politically neutral entity. Through a theoretical overview, the phases of risk theory, analysis, evaluation, and management are examined, highlighting how each of them is influenced by normative decisions, power asymmetries, and knowledge conflicts.
This paper analyzes the global border management model based on the construction of walls, as well as the reasons governments give to justify their construction over a 55-year period, from 1968 to 2023. During the 55 years studied, the construction of 79 new border walls was detected, 73 of them built after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thus, a very different narrative is imposed than that of the freedom of movement promised with the advent of globalization. Since the 1990s, the construction of border walls has become the dominant political strategy to curb the challenge of forced displacement, especially by the wealthiest countries. But the systems deployed are generating and transforming forms of violence at borders against those precisely fleeing it, creating new spatial hierarchies and eroding peacebuilding.
This article examines the contributions of the residents of Chicago's Hull House to the study of industrial-city problems at the end of the nineteenth century and contrasts them with the notion of the "city as a laboratory" developed by the Chicago School of Sociology. The Hull House residents were pioneers in the empirical analysis of urban inequality and labour exploitation through the use of data, statistics, and maps, which they applied as tools for social transformation. Their method, inspired by the pragmatist "community of inquiry," understood knowledge as the result of a collective process aimed at improving urban living conditions. The article argues for the contemporary relevance of this pioneering approach to rethinking urban research from a gender perspective committed to social justice, empathy, and care as central dimensions of urban life.
This article proposes transferring the biographical approach, used as a form of sociological or ethnographic-ethnohistorical observation, to the analysis of place. This approach focuses on life stories and life histories, that is, on a framework that includes both what the person remembers and narrates, as well as any information that contextualises their life. The text first presents the theoretical foundations and their development, referring to the proposed methodology; considering that places are constructed by the human groups that inhabit or use them, a biographical approach to place will have the potential to reveal operating collective dynamics. It then presents the methodology itself and a case study, the life history of a specific place and building, which illustrates this mode of analysis. Finally, it presents the conclusions regarding this methodology, its usefulness and possibilities.
This article examines street cries as a sonic practice that has historically been associated with trading in Barcelona's public markets, focusing on their gradual disappearance from the city's central spaces as part of a broader process of urban transformation and sensory regulation guided by aesthetic, normative, and class-based criteria. Applying a historical and sensorial approach, the study explores the dynamics that, since the 19th century, have contributed to the silencing of this traditional form of expression in municipal markets as a result of the evolving bourgeois culture that privileges order, restraint, and homogeneity in public space. In contrast, the article highlights how contemporary street markets that are located in the urban periphery, continue to uphold street cries as a legitimate mode of expression and sales practice, functioning as spaces where sensory and cultural diversity still thrive-now absent from centralized markets. Far from being a folkloric remnant, street cries are conceptualized here as an acoustic marker of popular presence and spatial appropriation, whose continuous persistence on the margins of the city reveals unequal urban power relations while also pointing toward alternative models of public representation and coexistence.
This year marks the centenary of The City (1925), masterpiece for the development of urban studies in the 20th century. Written by Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and Roderick McKenzie-with the careful collaboration of Louis Wirth-the volume constitutes one of the milestones on which the Chicago School was built, identified in this phase with the coordinates of urban ecology. The work still stands out for its analytical innovation, intellectual stimulation and the research suggestions it weaves together. Although it has been the subject of pertinent criticism, we believe that The City can be considered a common heritage of all urbanites. On this anniversary, we wish to pay it the recognition it deserves with a reflection on the research derived from its analytical assumptions and on the urban context in which it emerged.
