Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The main objective is to analyze the impact of Social, Preventive, and Mandatory Isolation policies (in Phase 1) developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on the social reproduction of working-class families in different slums of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, focusing on the socio-urban and economic conditions. Our working hypotheses refer to the employment and housing situation, as the former explains the massification of decommodification practices in the everyday life of homes, and the precarious housing conditions of the latter (conceptually understanding housing as a habitat and a public health indicator) explains the health crisis preceding the pandemic, despite the local policies on redevelopment. Among the main results, the crisis of the capitalist neoliberal process of commodification of the reproduction of everyday life within the framework of an economic, health and housing crisis stands out. In order to carry out this work, a multi-method strategy was adopted, where the primary qualitative data were extracted from semi-structured interviews with key informants (and residents) of the slums, and the quantitative data were derived from the analysis of census and government reports.

One of the distinctive aspects of the migrants’ settlement in the destination territories is their concentration in metropolitan areas and, within them, in certain territorial areas. The article proposes problematizing migrant living through the dimensions of housing, home, and location of migrants residing in Greater Santiago, which allows us to understand the ongoing migratory phenomenon by identifying, through the overcrowding variable, the intangible social resources associated with social, cultural, and economic capitals that circulate in family and non-family networks. The methodological strategy is quantitative in nature, it uses statistical sources from the 2017 Census and the results of the Migrant Voices (VM) survey, carried out by the Jesuit Migrant Service (2019). The main results are aimed at understanding that migrant dwelling associated with overcrowding, despite presenting elements of precariousness and social vulnerability, could also expose family strategies of mutual support and care among the migrant population in the receiving societies.

The Neighborhood Unit No 3 (UV3) was an approach to social housing based on the theory of the Neighborhood-Unit and the Satellite City, where Planned Open Spaces (POS) were relevant for the health and community development of the population. These were occupied and their physical-architectural characteristics were transformed. The objective of this research was to identify the transformation by appropriation of POS in UV3. Using a qualitative approach, a graphical comparative analysis of the original approach versus the current situation, documentary analysis and field observation were carried out. Changes were found identified based on the placement of material elements to delimit and subdivide spaces, and the incorporation of these to the residential space, changes in the use from collective green area to the individual space of the adjoining house, and the placement of symbolic elements of recognition. All of which result in different types of appropriation: according to the agent, the nature, and the consequences. It is concluded that the transformation of the POS from the original approach has been possible due to the disproportionate size of their areas, and is the result of different forms of appropriation that have generated an informal urban profile.

The case of the Vieja Farmacia Solís is similar to several buildings located around the east part of the bay of Montevideo, which meet the characteristic of having formerly been factories or shops, gone through a process of abandonment and become spaces for the deployment of artistic, sports and / or educational activities. From an ethnography carried out between 2016 and 2020 in this territoriality, we analyze the processes of subjectivation involved in the transformations of these spaces. That is why we present results of this unique space, which has a history linked to human actions, the mutation of technical objects, and desiring production, in the midst of a process of abandonment and capitalist speculation. For this we use theoretical-conceptual perspectives from the studies of heterotopias and Environmental Psychology, which allowed us to problematize the heterogeneity of actions, senses, interests, desires and controversies, from a relational, articulatory and analytical perspective of power. From ethnography and its translation into narrative, we provide an account of the affirmative nature of the proposal of spatial palimpsest, and a way of conceiving it as inclusive and critical heterotropia.

This article is framed within the paradigm of Participatory Action Research and its main research objective was to detect and make visible potential labor and commercial links between a recently gentrified sector of the city of Córdoba (Argentina), Zona Güemes (ZG), and a neglected sector on the other side of La Cañada stream, corresponding to the Güemes, Observatorio, and Cupani neighborhoods (GOC). In a first diagnostic stage, surveys of commercial premises, and surveys and interviews with shopkeepers in ZG and inhabitants of GOC were conducted. An exploratory descriptive analysis, a multiple correspondence analysis to establish the main correlations between relevant variables, qualitative data matrices, and georeferencing were carried out to summarize and visualize the data. The findings show that there are objective and subjective conditions that allow for a dignified and adequate transference of resources between ZG traders (demanders of workers and/or providers of goods and services) and GOC neighbors (suppliers of the latter), with the potential for significant mutual gain. In this way, bridges are proposed to redistribute the benefit of the revaluation of a gentrified area to a neglected area, taking advantage of its geographical proximity.

The goals globally assumed related to social and environmental challenges, plus the COVID-19 pandemic, have pointed to the need of reducing private vehicle mobility and articulating proximity structures in cities. This task must not ignore the demand for mobility generated by the functional configuration of urban areas after the metropolitan expansion processes carried out in the recent decades. On the basis of mobility data, this work analyses the evolution of retail and leisure centralities in Madrid Urban Area between 1996 and 2018, and its effects on proximity, sustainable mobility modes, and socio-spatial segregation. The results show a remarkable transformation of the functional structure during this period, which is unfavorable to the objectives pursued. Compared to 1996, the centralities based on pedestrian mobility and proximity have lost relative weight and relevance, while new peripheral sections highly dependent on private vehicles have gained new centrality.

This paper addresses a set of situations of daily mobility referred to the social collective of female domestic workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region. Our main objective is to identify –from a structural perspective– the general features of these workers’ mobility and their relation to social differentiation as a characteristic of the metropolitan city. Domestic workers represent a high proportion of the female metropolitan workers. This group has been characterized by extremely vulnerable social conditions and precarious labor relations. Regarding mobility, they make the longest trips, with more transfers, and mainly by public transport. The spatiality of their trips reveals the social geography of cities and their residential inequalities. We relied on the quantitative analysis of the mobility data generated by public institutions in terms of socio-territorial differentiation. Results show the metropolitan articulation and differentiation between residential and employment locations, where three mobility subsystems can be distinguished: local, subregional, and metropolitan. This approach helps to understand the current metropolitan dynamics in terms of scenarios of multiple interactions and diverse social temporalities, evincing socio-spatial segregation processes in city and mobility models that favor inequality.

Based on research taken place over the course of a decade by a collective group of researchers on the daily mobility practices as well as on care issues, we identified six categories that contribute to the spatialization of care from a relational spaces approach. Through mobile ethnographies of urban dwellers’ daily lives, we were able to understand how care strategies and circulations take place, and their relation with subjects of care, practices, time spaces, places, affects, materialities, and objects that support care in cities like Santiago, Concepción or Temuco. Understanding them from a perspective of relational space helps to visualize the complexity that care implies, and the intertwined implications of space that go beyond domestic space. This paper contributes to the existing work on invisible aspects of care including the spatialization of care and to the discussion on the need to defamiliarize and collectivize care in Chile. This is particularly relevant today, as care became a major issue in Chile and globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as it was possible to identify the material reality of care in tangible ways, and also to question the ways we want to care for ourselves and our living space in the future.

This study proposes to contribute to the discussions on gender and disaster, based on a thought on intersectional living that would allow rereading the processes of emergency and reconstruction, identifying how disasters affect the experiences of the affected people in a differentiated and unequal way. Based on ethnographic work, focus groups and interviews, the situated experience of three women who led their communities after the 2010 earthquake and tsunami in Chile, from the territories of Llico, Arauco and Constitución, is analyzed. The intersectional analysis shows that three levels of inhabited space are identified in the stories, which are not only appropriated and lived by women, but also managed and used as a resource for organization and exercise of power: the home, the neighborhood or immediate surroundings and the city or locality. Second, the gendered division of labor forces women to assume double roles in order to “rebuild” their productive and reproductive spheres. Finally, forms of exercising power and social organization are evidenced, in which, faced with inequality of power, women counteract said asymmetry with networking to respond to the needs of their communities.

The urban debate has taken an unprecedented turn due to the global health emergency. Academic and non-academic reflections have brought into discussion the future of cities, where everyday life was disrupted by the pandemic. This study attempts to identify the boundaries of an emerging public opinion on the pandemic and its urban effects in Latin America. To this end, it develops a comparative analysis of discourses grouped into three major thematic sources: academia, the press, and social networks. By means of a preliminary content analysis, and a trend analysis in a later stage, it seeks to identify the most recurrent and important themes. The results reveal the accentuated biases among the abovementioned sources, even though they share a common problem. Likewise, the asepsis or neutrality of academic resources is rediscovered, a condition that contrasts with the polarization of non-academic media. The analysis culminates with bibliometric predictions on future topics, thus identifying the concepts that will drive the urban debate in post-pandemic Latin America.