{"id":24964,"date":"2020-04-08T10:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T08:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogfundacion.arquia.es\/2020\/04\/que-nos-ensena-la-ciudad\/"},"modified":"2020-06-19T15:06:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T13:06:42","slug":"what-can-we-learn-from-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogfundacion.arquia.es\/en\/2020\/04\/what-can-we-learn-from-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"What Can We Learn from the City?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/div> City in an Egyptian perspective. Author: Virginia Navarro<\/p><\/div>\n

The city grants us social importance through its spaces, and the categorisation of those spaces educates citizens. So when a fenced-in play area is designed for children, for example, with swings and a rubber floor, children learn that they are socially separated from the adult world, that the main design parameter is their safety and that their fun involves the acquisition of playground furniture that can be found repeatedly in any urban setting<\/strong>, as if each item were a fashionable toy. There\u2019s therefore no identification of the children and their play activities with the neighbourhood or the surroundings. On the contrary, they are imbued with a kind of globalised vision of common space<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That globalisation is reiterated and reinforced in adult life. Local businesses are gradually disappearing, giving way to international franchises which occupy urban locations where beauty, in an irresistible, fatal turn of events, has become a consumer good<\/strong>. The urban harmony that\u2019s taken so many centuries to achieve is now a product that sells. This pushes autochthonous residents away to new locations where, dispossessed, they realise that the emblematic spaces in their city can be marketed and turned into settings completely devoid of their old, familiar immutability<\/strong> to cater to the fleeting caprices of passing visitors.<\/p>\n

However, any excessive swing in a given direction spontaneously generates its own pockets of resistance<\/strong>. We\u2019re seeing, for example, how minority groups (disabled people, old people, residents\u2019 associations, women\u2019s and children\u2019s organizations) are vindicating a democratic space where the city will treat each and every one of its inhabitants as equals. At the same time, schools \u2013 aware of cities\u2019 educational potential and their capacity to transmit values and opportunities \u2013 are fomenting the notion of \u201ceducational cities\u201d in an attempt to generate a sense of social commitment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At a time when labels abound, it\u2019s important to place this initiative, the founding charter<\/a> of which was signed in Barcelona in 1990, in context. Its main objectives include some interesting proposals:<\/p>\n